But the overstatement, if it later has to be walked back, damages the credibility of the record.

It gives critics of Native history a target.

And it is, at its root, disrespectful to the person it claims to honor — it treats her as a vehicle for a story rather than as a person whose actual achievements, however incompletely documented, are real and significant.

What the record actually supports is significant enough.

She worked at the highest levels of American aerospace mathematics during one of the most consequential periods in that field’s history.

She co-authored a technical handbook that directly addressed the mathematics of missions to Mars and Venus at a time when such missions were theoretical but technically serious.