Biosphere 2 Project Charged With Scientific Cheating

TUCSON, Ariz. - The four men and four women were to be sealed inside the glass-and-steel structure, raising their own food, recycling their air, water and wastes - independent and untouched by the world outside.

That, at least, is what they said.

But, in the four months that Biosphere 2 has operated, project sponsors have pumped in fresh air from outside. They have admitted to secretly installing a machine to scrub carbon dioxide from the air. They have acknowledged that the artificial world was stocked with food ahead of time.

Some former employees or people close to the project are charging fraud and deception. Other sources say it's just a matter of inept public relations. In either case, the credibility of a project that once promised to blaze a trail for the survival of Earth's species has eroded.

Among the most serious accusations:

-- A crew member who left for medical treatment secretly brought back a duffel bag full of supplies, including, one critic says, a supply of seals that are supposed to prove the airlock doors haven't been opened.

-- Computer programs that monitor conditions inside the dome were designed to permit tampering with the data.

Space Biospheres Ventures, the private company that developed the project, denies those specific allegations as well as others by critics of Biosphere management, said spokesman Larry Winokur.

But a key consultant, Carl Hodges, director of the University of

Arizona's Environmental Research Laboratory, has gone to Texas billionaire Ed Bass - the prime funding source for Biosphere 2 - and urged him to "do everything possible" to save the project's credibility.

Hodges said he expressed his "deep concern over the status of the project, particularly as it is being interpreted from reports coming from the Biosphere project to the press, to the public."

VERIFICATION DIFFICULT

Just what is going on inside Biosphere 2 is difficult to verify - partly, it seems, because the project's managers are not reluctant to litigate.

One critic is being sued by Biosphere officials. Some former employees say they fear retaliation if they speak out; some worry their home phones are bugged. Outside environmental and life-sciences specialists contacted for comment generally declined to be quoted by name. Those still working at the site have been required to sign statements promising not to talk to reporters or to sue the company - or even to acknowledge that such statements exist.

One scientist unaffiliated with the project who's willing to speak for the record is Larry Slobodkian of the State University of New York-Stonybrook, a general ecologist who once worked with NASA on closed systems in space.

He says Biosphere 2's introduction of fresh air, storage of food and outside energy production "disqualifies the installation as a closed experiment, but we already knew that. So it's an exercise of a very strange kind of living in very close proximity in almost a prison-like situation."

The 3.15-acre "miniplanet" featuring a tiny ocean, savannah and 3,800 species of plants and animals, was sealed Sept. 26 for a two-year experiment.

Biosphere officials said beforehand that this was not pure science but a science-oriented business. Visitors are charged $9.95 for escorted tours of the outside of the walls.

The project's cost was publicly placed at $150 million. Some have suggested it is closer to a half-billion dollars.

On Oct. 9, crew member Jane Poynter sliced off a fingertip in a threshing accident. She left the structure Oct. 11 for surgery and returned within hours.

When she did, she took with her a duffel bag of materials. But that wasn't disclosed until Jan. 4, when SVB issued a "background report" saying the supplies included plastic bags, two reference books, maps showing plant locations, color film, hydrochloric acid and spare computer parts.

A DIFFERENT STORY

In early December, though, California filmmaker Louis Hawthorne, who spent several weeks at the Biosphere as it was being prepared for closure, said his contacts told a different story.

They told him Poynter carried two bags containing steel fittings, hydrochloric acid and "a handful of lead-wire airlock tamper indicators." Indicators are attached outside the doors to prove nobody has gone in or out.

Spokesman Winokur, who's with a Los Angeles public relations firm, said the allegation about tamper indicators "is patently ridiculous."

On Dec. 19, SBV's director of systems engineering, Bill Dempster, acknowledged that 10 days earlier, 600,000 cubic feet of outside air had been pumped in through the system's "lungs," or pressure equalization chambers.

He said that was to replace 10 percent of air that leaked out of the dome.

SBV's "background report" early last month also revealed, belatedly, that the crew went in with a three-month supply of food, a two-year supply of dried fruit and monkey food, birdseed for finches and dried nectar for hummingbirds.

Hawthorne contended that they actually had a full year's supply of food; Winokur denied it.

SVB has sued Hawthorne, who was hired last year by the University of Phoenix to produce an educational documentary on Biosphere 2. The university, which has close ties with Biosphere 2, was also a plaintiff in the suit.

Hawthorne maintains he was sued because he refused to do an entirely positive piece about the project, and because he discussed co-production of a documentary with ABC-TV's "PrimeTime Live."

Stewart, who resigned effective the day after closure, accusing SBV management of "exhibiting a pattern of deception," said in an interview that software easily could be designed to produce editable data.

Asked whether there had been any effort to tamper with the data, he paused for 15 seconds and then replied, "I'd probably better not comment on that." Attorneys for SBV had threatened litigation "if I discuss any of the ways that they do business."

Hawthorne says, "I can certainly corroborate from my experience there I saw an ongoing, constant pattern of deception."