Back in my academia years, I was really frustrated with that group of researchers, "cult of power law" I called them - mainly centered around Santa Fe Institute.

In all their talks, the pattern was always the same: 1) take a dataset from some random system, and strip it from all its domain context ("interdisciplinary" research) 2) brag about being a "physicist" thus applying a "physicist's" approach to new areas of research 3) plot data on log-log scale - kind of looks like a power law 4) make a toy model and use it to "simulate the system" 5) plot simulation vs real data on log-log scale -- kinda look the same 6) promise that your trivial little model will reveal whole new horizons for that field you know nothing about - because others are stupid and you're a "physicist" 7) write a grant proposal