The paper by Broido and Clauset challenges the widely accepted belief that real-world networks are typically "scale-free," meaning that the fraction of nodes with degree \( k \) follows a power law, often with \( 2 < \alpha < 3 \). Using advanced statistical methods and a large corpus of nearly 1000 network datasets from various domains, they test the universality of scale-free structure. The results show that scale-free networks are rare, with only 4% exhibiting strong evidence of scale-free structure and 52% showing weak evidence. Social networks are found to be at best weakly scale-free, while a few technological and biological networks exhibit strong scale-free properties. These findings suggest that real-world networks exhibit a rich variety of structural patterns, challenging the universality of scale-free networks and highlighting the need for new models and mechanisms to explain their diverse structures.The paper by Broido and Clauset challenges the widely accepted belief that real-world networks are typically "scale-free," meaning that the fraction of nodes with degree \( k \) follows a power law, often with \( 2 < \alpha < 3 \). Using advanced statistical methods and a large corpus of nearly 1000 network datasets from various domains, they test the universality of scale-free structure. The results show that scale-free networks are rare, with only 4% exhibiting strong evidence of scale-free structure and 52% showing weak evidence. Social networks are found to be at best weakly scale-free, while a few technological and biological networks exhibit strong scale-free properties. These findings suggest that real-world networks exhibit a rich variety of structural patterns, challenging the universality of scale-free networks and highlighting the need for new models and mechanisms to explain their diverse structures.