2003年《科学美国人》上Barabasi和Bonabeau的文章《Scale-Free Networks》，其中有这么一段：
When we began to map the Web, we expected the nodes to follow a bell-shaped distribution, as do people's heights. Instead we discovered certain nodes that defied explanation, almost as if we had stumbled on a significant number of people who were 100 feet tall, thus prompting us to coin the term "scale-free".
这种解释不是所有人都同意。就算是，也和奥卡姆剃刀的解释相差太多了点（虽然表面上有相似之处）。