Yes and no. A simulation can test your model, which you then compare with empirical results to validate both the model and the simulation of it. When those resu

Yes and no. A simulation can test your model, which you then compare with empirical results to validate both the model and the simulation of it. When those results do not match, you have to figure out if your simulation is wrong or the model is wrong. The model said that O28 would be doubly magic and thus stable, and yet when they managed to make it, it was exceptionally short lived. As a result the model they have is missing something. On the plus side, now that they have an empirical result, they can tweak the model such that it continues to accurately describe what it currently describes, and describes a short lived O28. Once they have those tweaks, they can find another experiment to see if their updated model accurately predicts what the experiment would produce. If it does, they gain more confidence in the model, if it does not, they go back to tweaking the model. This is the essential core of scientific research, for science to be believable it needs to predict things that will happen given conditions, and then experimentalists establish those conditions and look for confirmation of the prediction. It is the only way to know if what we think we know is in fact worth knowing!