I'm guessing that not a single person has gone to read the actual article - which is an open-access publication. The abstract is here and anyone can read the whole article.

The article puts the research into context with the IPCC's statement of low confidence in its last report (i.e., no scandal) based on limited observations that make it hard to measure the different forces affecting Antarctic ice.

The article's ultimate conclusions are that sea ice extent back then was a lot greater for the Weddell Sea area and greater for the rest of the Antarctic. Not that there's been no change.

Here are their conclusions, extracted from their paper:

We estimate that the DJFM sea ice edge was at most 0.41◦ further south between 1989 and 2014 than it was during the Heroic Age (1897–1917), implying a reduction of 14.2 % in pan-Antarctic extent.
– This change is most dramatic and statistically robust in the Weddell Sea, where the ice edge shifted by 1.71◦ southward between the two periods.
– Our estimate of the change in extent between the Heroic Age and the present day is small relative to estimates of the change between the 1950s and 1970s, based on whale catch data (Cotté and Guinet, 2007; de la Mare, 1997; Titchner and Rayner, 2014). This suggests the possibility that the sea ice was significantly more extensive during the period 1931–1961 than during the Heroic Age.

So the paper says that from 1931-1961 there was more ice than back then -- and more than today. That doesn't debunk anything about global warming. It says that the recent ice extent is lower than back then, but in between, there has been more ice.