Malcolm Gladwell often writes lies in his nonfiction books. I have found myself personally deceived by some of his lies. For instance, on page 39 of Outliers, he writes:
The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks.
The first time I read this passage, I thought it was one of the most extraordinary pieces of information I'd ever encountered. It meant that practice almost completely determines ability! I mostly believed that for more than 4 years. (And so did the rest of the world -- that's the core of the 10000 hours meme.)
It turns out that the passage is completely false. Ericsson's study did not actually say anything about individual violinists at all -- it only ever reported average statistics of groups of violinists.
Other studies of the relationship between total practice time and ability have found that different people may reach a given level of ability with enormously different practice totals. For instance a study of chess players found that the average amount of practice time needed to reach the Master level is ~11000 hours -- but the standard deviation of the distribution is more than 5000 hours. One person only took 3000 hours to reach Master level. Another took 23000 hours. [1]
Calling this kind of deception "being playful with ideas" is absurd.
[1] Note: I have not read the study in question. My info comes secondhand, from http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/08/talent-training-and-... and http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/media/books/H....
I certainly wouldn't call that normal. Noone lives at those altitudes.
Yes, I am aware of Gladwell using this caveat.
The thing is, if you want to make people think you can:
* Present your argument from first principles, making it clear the backing comes ultimately from your deductions not scientific research.
* Present a full, nuance pictures of the state of present day research.
But it's difficult to argue that just the patina of scientific authority engages people's critical analysis reflex rather than engaging people's accepting-authority reflex. And that's with all your and Gladwell's caveats.
I mean, people like yourself who I assume know the literature aren't going to be swayed too much by the "great story telling" but conversely, who are swayed by story telling aren't that likely to read the caveats.
>>> "Gladwell has strong integrity of a kind, but it is not the integrity of a scholar of psychology like Christopher Chabris."
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. Groucho
Edit: Just consider, many people will listen to an Obama speech about ending surveillance in 2007 and then look at Obama's behavior now and say "he lied". I'd like to think that I can parse out caveat in 2007-Obama which open up the door for 2013-Obama. But I don't actually think that means 2007-Obama didn't effectively lie. It means Obama is smart and talks to people "on different levels" and perhaps has "strong integrity of a kind" but in our multiply weasel-wordy-world, the question is "what kind?" right?
I have a feeling that he had some good ideas that he put forth in his first few books; now he's just trying to use his name to sell more books. Which is not something that he denies. So fucking smart...Imagine that there was no law for punishing stealing. You catch a thief, and he admits immediately that he was stealing. Then what do you do?
I wish K. Anders Ericsson put as many of his papers up on the Web in freely downloadable form as Jelte Wicherts or Eric Turkheimer or other psychology researchers do, but at least his faculty webpages provide a lot of references to his studies of the acquisition of expert performance.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html
As a research program continues, reasonable minds can differ about how much is well demonstrated and how much still needs more research to become a confirmed finding, but I consistently find Ericsson's papers interesting, and have enjoyed reading and thinking about them since long before the first time Malcolm Gladwell wrote about Ericsson's research. Google Scholar notes some of his most-cited papers,
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ym0clGUAAAAJ&hl=en
and there is a whole book, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance about that line of research that is well worth a read.
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/cog...
Separate issue and point is that a sure way to make a name for yourself (I mean he may be well know in his circles or your circles but I've never ever heard of him) is to take on someone of much greater fame.
For example, let me give you the path here:
I participate in HN
"tokenadult" is well respected on HN.
I respect what "tokenadult" says. So do others his comment is at the top.
tokenadult called Chris Chabris "a scholar of psychology"
I decided to do some more checking on Chris Chabris and found out he graduated from and also did some teaching at Harvard.
I wouldn't know any of this if Chris hadn't written the critique of Malcolm Gladwell. Which caught my eye because it was about Gladwell
Disclosure: I've dealt with Malcolm Gladwell in business. [1]
[1] Points to anyone who can see if this is really a disclosure or actually presented for another purpose.
Gladwell is indeed on record saying that he doesn't write to be true in the scholarly sense, but to be thought-provoking. He has said in an interview that he writes to try out ideas.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html
"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
And Gladwell is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly. And in particular, I recommend Gladwell's "Disclosure Statement," an essay about conflicts of interest for professional writers,
http://gladwell.com/disclosure-statement/
which I learned about from another HN submission. Gladwell has strong integrity of a kind, but it is not the integrity of a scholar of psychology like Christopher Chabris.
Regarding the new book under review, I am particularly worried about claims that dyslexia is any kind of advantage for anything. Many cases of dyslexia are the woeful result of poor practices in teaching reading,
http://learninfreedom.org/readseri.html
http://learninfreedom.org/readbook.html
and it would be very regrettable to drop efforts to improve initial reading instruction on the flawed theory that dyslexia provides advantages to young learners. Gladwell says he is "happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think," and definitely we should all think each time we read anything.