Yeah confusion between simulation and reality can be observed all over the place. Multiple runs can be needed if you're doing measurements of the natural world, but for a simulation that doesn't make sense (you can do Monte Carlo style stuff, but that's still replicable).

You could see the lines being blurred in other ways. Outputs of simulations would be referred to as "findings", for example, or referenced in ways that implied empirical observation without it being clear where they came from unless you carefully checked citations.

Here are some of the articles I wrote about what happened (under a pseudonym)

https://dailysceptic.org/2020/05/06/code-review-of-fergusons...

https://dailysceptic.org/2020/05/09/second-analysis-of-fergu...

https://dailysceptic.org/2020/06/11/how-replicable-is-the-im...

After that people started sending me non-Imperial models to look at, which had some similar problems:

https://dailysceptic.org/2020/08/08/schools-paper/

I don't write for that website anymore, by the way. Back then it was called Lockdown Sceptics and was basically the only forum that would publish any criticism of COVID science. Nowadays it's evolved to be a more general news site.