fluffymark | Heresy is scale free network, apparently

The condensed matter physics preprint archive has some very strange items on it.

The Medieval Inquisition: Scale-free Networks and the Suppression of Heresy

Authors: Paul Ormerod, Andrew Roach
Comments: 12 pages
Subj-class: Disordered Systems and Neural Networks; Statistical Mechanics

Qualitative evidence suggests that heresy within the medieval Catholic Church had many of the characteristics of a scale-free network. From the perspective of the Church, heresy can be seen as a virus. The virus persisted for long periods of time, breaking out again even when the Church believed it to have been eradicated. A principal mechanism of heresy was through a small number of individuals with very large numbers of social contacts. Initial attempts by the Inquisition to suppress the virus by general persecution, or even mass slaughtering, of populations thought to harbour the "disease" failed. Gradually, however, the Inquisition learned about the nature of the social networks by which heresy both spread and persisted. Eventually, a policy of targeting key individuals was implemented, which proved to be much more successful.

I must admit to being a bit baffled about the connection between catholic heresy and condensed matter, but it has all the makings of a wonderful sounding consipracy theory.