This is the article: Juan Camilo Bohorquez, Sean Gourley, Alexander R. Dixon, Michael Spagat, & Neil F. Johnson, "Common ecology quantifies human insurgency," Nature 462, 911-914 (17 December 2009). (subscriptions required)
- You'll find Gourley's TED talk based on some of the findings here.
- You'll find a strong methodological critique of the work by Drew Conway, Thomas Zeitzoff, and Joshua Fouston at Registan.net here.
Frankly, I find the research both methodologically flawed and unimpressive, especially in that it imputes a measure of insurgent fragmentation from a mathematical formula based on the nature of attacks, rather than from any actual measure of insurgent fragmentation. From a policy or intel point of view, I don't think it's that useful at all.
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