The backlash against the Fergusson-Imperial model continues (e.g. this piece in the Tellegraph). Yes it would have been better if Nature had forced Fegusson to publish his code 8 years ago, then (a) he would have checked and tidied it then and (b) people would have been able to check and improve on it over a number of years. That would have increased confidence in the code. However, these attacks (where a random research is got to say that the code is a mess) are simply political – a wish to undermine a policy they do not happen to like (the lock-down restrictions).