[Barrin92]

>comparing it to real data

given that the study goes back as far as the creation of the Illiad I have serious trouble believing that we have high fidelity data about the social graph of individuals at that point in history.

Pretty much all we have is second-hand accounts to begin with which may themselves be as unreliable as fiction. So on that particular case, I fully agree with the author. That's not actually scientific.