You're telling me someone made bold, sweeping claims at a TED talk and really captured some rich pseudo-intellectual I-Am-Wealthy-And-Therefore-Smart people's interest...but then didn't deliver, even several years later?! Perish the thought! I think I've come to the realization that TED is just kickstarter for the wealthy. ANYWAY, that's not really what the article is about, just a pet peeve. It seems like there's probably a workable product underneath the smoke and mirrors if they had just...I don't know, worked on it harder? Done better? Nothing about a hydroponic environment with controllable levels of CO2 and other nutrients sounds all that inconceivable, they just felt like they had to lie about what it did I suppose. What frustrates me about this story is that the next people who try to make a version of this that works are going to have a harder time because of this lab's inability to admit that a design wasn't working and start over. I suspect there's a story about the modern funding cycle making innovation harder for scientists, but I'll leave that argument for someone else to make - we've all heard it before, and I don't have any novel research that doesn't just rehash common knowledge (well...common knowledge among hubski users, anyway)
More context from someone who works in the ag science field: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1171895657872941056
This sounds like a lot of research projects that get big funding. I'd be willing to bet that smaller projects that aren't oversold actually produce better results in the long run. Unfortunately, the overselling bit seems to be part of academic culture. I've had several people give me strange looks when I start to talk candidly about the caveats of my research and the progress I've made on it.