I view the mention by Technology Review and the paper of gas-pump price changes as just giving an example and context that most readers will understand or at le

I view the mention by Technology Review and the paper of gas-pump price changes as just giving an example and context that most readers will understand or at least believe they understand. If the assumption is that the cartel-like behavior is coordinated, then that a model that is clearly not coordinated exhibits similar qualitative behavior should give pause to that assumption. I agree that it's not an actual explanation or a model of any actual market. How both the article and paper are worded is a bit ambiguous on that point most likely for purposes of attracting a bit of attention and grant money. But if you look closely, there's no outright claim in either. As for seemingly ignoring existing literature in another field, it's kind of par for the course. A lot of "discoveries" made early on in complexity research on sandpiles were already well-documented in civil engineering.