alt Hacker NewsA) I can't read the article because it's paywalled.
B) Regardless of what story it tells, the article is an opinion piece by a journalist and a cardiologist, not authorities on the topic, and has a misleading title: that "answering [the] question [of whether Blue Zones are real]" is harder than ever. It's not.
You didn't miss anything. There aren't any new facts in the article. It treats the original blue zone researchers very generously, waves its hands about drawing conclusions on whether the original blue zone research was due to pension fraud or not, and generally blathers on for dozens of paragraphs talking about various things tangentially related like that some blue zone areas no longer have many centenarians or various bullshit marketing claims using blue zone language by Buettner, etc, etc.