Re:Why Malcolm Gladwell Matters and Why That's Unfortunate
by tokenadult on Monday October 07, 2013 @07:00PM
(#6511903)
Your points are fair. What I have liked about Gladwell's writings on the issues he treated in Outliers (the only book of his I have read) is that he found authors who do all of the "Present your argument from first principles" and "Present a full, nuance pictures of the state of present day research" you helpfully ask for and then made their work much better known. That's a contribution to public understanding.
Re:Why Malcolm Gladwell Matters and Why That's Unfortunate
by pm90 on Monday October 07, 2013 @07:40PM
(#6512068)
Yes, but the present article says that he has not done that for the present book (see the experiment on Princeton students).
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?
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?