From TFA (more like 10th graf after a lot on the NASA project):

> research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoods closer to toxic sites such as factories and highways, without sidewalks and amenities. “It’s a challenging field to quantify, but we’re getting to a place in science where we can start asking these questions,”

That sounds like science to me, they're trying to quantify health outcomes relative to community environment. Later research can use the figures, just like with your black hole observations.

One could say that maybe they should measure low-income communities in general with race as a dimension, but that doesn't make the whole thing "bad science".

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timr 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Literally the thing I quoted in the top comment on the thread. Go read that comment.

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nixon_why69 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, but measuring things that are poorly understood (to wit: community environmental factors on health outcomes) is part of the scientific process. Thanks for reminding me that you quoted that, I'm just not understanding the objection from then until now.

Maybe other things are more important? Maybe they're not. Maybe black hole data won't be actionable for 500 years. I don't know, I'm also more interested in space than health so I'm with you if we had to pick one. But I wouldn't call this work "not science".

	▲	gazebo2 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Yeah, but measuring things that are poorly understood (to wit: community environmental factors on health outcomes) is part of the scientific process. Is this really poorly understood? I think that's (partially) their point. I think we all pretty well understand that income correlates with health and that poorer people will tend to live in less healthy environments.