Let us note that Eagleworks is by no means the only people who claim to have gotten results from the setup. A group in China, if I recall correctly, claimed to get a result orders of magnitude larger than Eagleworks did, if I recall correctly. But, that result (r at least the reporting of it to the science community in the rest of the world) also lacked rigor.
So, say you are NASA. You hear the Chinese claim a result. They don't turn over data. You have three choices:
1) Ignore the Chinese entirely.
2) Put theoreticians and thorough and expensive experimentalists on a deep analysis for years - and remember that Clarke's First Law applies*
3) Hand some chump change to someone to see if they can replicate the result, quick and dirty.
In terms of risk analysis, tossing chump change at fast and dirty projects may make sense, as a cost-effective vetting process. You don't actually expect any of these to turn out results, but if one does... the return on that investment will be *huge*. Take it sort of as... NASA playing the lottery with pocket change.