Biosphere Or Biostunt?

TWO THINGS KEPT THE 3.15-ACRE GLASS-AND-STEEL structure called Biosphere 2 from being just another greenhouse: a hermetic seal separating 3,800 species of plants and animals, including four men and four women, from the rest of the planet, and a veneer of scientific legitimacy. The seal has been broken several times in the past year and a half -- most recently to pump in 10 tons of badly needed oxygen. Now the veneer of credibility, already bruised by allegations of tamper-prone data, secret food caches and smuggled supplies, has cracked.

On Monday a panel of outside experts called upon to shore up Biosphere 2's scientific underpinnings announced that they had voted to resign, citing unspecified conflicts with the project's managers. "I was frustrated by the lack of progress," said biologist Thomas Lovejoy, the panel's chairman. The Biospherians will soldier on, but their two-year experiment in self- sufficiency is starting to look less like science and more like a $150 million stunt.