We certainly were not MIT, but one of my grad school projects was running one of those computer-aided End of the World programs.
Our advisor well and truly screwed up, though.
Everybody involved had cut their teeth on computers while wearing uniforms and tended to treat the ‘puter as a tool instead of a bloody oracle.
Well, we did the programming, ran the thing and generated the appropriate ten or so pounds of printout.
Our summary: “If you assume that the world is coming to an end, the computer projections will support that assumption and vice versa. Garbage In, Garbage Out still works.”
(And no, it was never published.)
Outstanding story.