If you knew how they found the elements together, you would be far less sanguine about the significance. They started with random sampling of close proximity of genomic positions, plus some basic structural info on how chromatins (coiled DNA molecular) are organized. Then it is a nonlinear optimization with 1e-2 convergence criteria.

Several things lay people are never told: 1. Even for fixed data, the results are variable, i.e., you will get a different answer every time you run the nonlinear programming code. 2. There are different ways of getting to 3D positions of genomes and none is ever verified. 3. Tuning parameters greatly impact results. Yet one set of tuning parameters are just as valid as another.

I had the misfortune of helping someone to extend the code for this stuff that made into a Science paper, and I can tell you right now it is the worst C++ program I have ever seen.