Model is probabilistic by nature. Science is deterministic by necessity.
Both can create knowledge for sure.
My only point is this is not science. The article even calls it research, not science. The article doesn't mention the word science, even once.
F = ma is a model.
And you may try to limit your argument to only "statistical models = not science" but then you would be dismissing essentially all social sciences but also ecology, geology, climate science, not to mention every single aspect of statistical mechanics.
Science is essentially hypothesis testing where hypothesis represent models of how the world works. Didn't you even take high school physics where you spend considerable time running experiments and writing up why they don't exactly match the formula's prediction in the book?
Would you mind explaining what model-free science looks like? Is it just cataloging observations?
Anything that can be tested and replicated with all things exactly equal, except that which is the hypothesis being tested.
Most if not all of social science, ecology, geology, climate science may not be possible to do this way, since it often involves humans and/or earth, and its physically impossible to duplicate earth, or a human (with identical thoughts,feelings, or experience)