Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas (it's 10%)

Original article from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, from which the physorg blogspam is copied verbatim (except that they took out some useful links and added some irrelevant ones): http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2902

Abstract (and full text, if you don't mind paying or have an institutional subscription) of the published paper: http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v84/i1/e011130

Preprint in the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1102/1102.3931v2.pdf

Discussion at HN a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805125

Can't we please stop linking to physorg blogspam? Please?

> Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

Um, surely this statement needs to be qualified in some way? For example, I'd guess that over 10% of the population is "unshakably" pro-life, and over 10% of the population is unshakably pro-choice, and yet it is impossible that both beliefs will become held by the majority of society.

As I was reading the article, it became clearer and clearer that it had increasingly serious issues. I got to thinking to myself, "Please, whoever wrote this paper, please don't be physicists stepping outside their domain and making the rest of us in physics look like fools."

Then I saw. Physica Review E.

=(

Then every political opinion that more than 10% of the population strongly believe in should have the majority at some point, all of them. It seems that this is a simple and obvious counter-example.