Yeah, you're probably right. When I hear "MIT", I automatically associate to hard sciences, math, and engineering. But I keep forgetting they have business, arts, too.
The use of statistics in population health (a term replacing "public health" in the science) is a hard science and extremely advanced higher math. quantifying the social costs of an unwanted behavior and the costs of nudging people toward wanted behaviors is science. So is the epidemiology of behavior based health consequence.
So, what the nannies think may or may not put your eye out, get you to not use plastic bags, push you to drive at 65.5 mph instead of 66 mph, and quantifying the social costs of any behavior is science.
And it is not business or arts, it is the cutting edge of governance and science based policy. and governance' a growth industry like no other!
The problem is it is also the underpinning of extreme paternalism that will reach totalitarian proportions. There is in fact in this model "no problem that can't be fixed with taxes." And there is also of course, no individual choice or liberty that is more informed, or even good, than decisions made for the masses than those determined and made by the expert class.