Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/10/should-we-stop-believing-malcolm-gladwel

by r0h1n • 13 years ago

370 222 13 years ago

ksj.mit.edu

bobbles• 13 years ago

"I haven't read the book"

But hey lets get some pageviews anyway right?

GeorgeOrr• 13 years ago

Did he at least see the cover, in order to judge it?

wiml• 13 years ago

Well, according to this great book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell (you might not have heard of him, but all the smart people are reading his stuff), one's first impression of something is sometimes amazingly accurate! So it's really not important that he read the book.

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

The critique is more of Gladwell's schtick or ouevre, than just latest book.

foobarbazqux2• 13 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell : non-fiction journalism :: Fox News : television journalism

It's entertaining fluff. If we become a society of fluffheads, that's okay, these things have a habit of correcting themselves.

morgante• 13 years ago

I don't think that's quite right.

Fox News encourages people not to think at all. Gladwell encourages people to think (the adjective thought-provoking is frequently applied to his work), even if his actual content isn't 100% true.

Also, I don't think Gladwell ever completely lies. He certainly bends the truth, but he doesn't make up things on a whim like Fox.

lutusp6• 13 years ago

Also, I don't think Gladwell ever completely lies.

True, but we need to ask what we mean by "lie". Blatant lying is easy to detect and uncover. Cherry-picking facts to make a point contradicted by reality, by science, is a sneakier kind of lying, a kind meant to appeal to the superficially educated, the sort of people for whom the title of the article asks a reasonable question -- should we "believe him"?

Educated people don't need to believe anyone -- they will instead accept a responsibility to gather facts, evidence, for themselves.

ddellacosta• 13 years ago

Interesting comment from the piece. Legit?

Boyce Rensberger - 5:20pm 10/08/2013

Gladwell is the same Gladwell as when I was his editor at The Washington Post. At first, I fell for his approach and brought him over to the science pod from the Post's business staff. Then I realized that he cherry picks research findings to support just-so stories. Every time I sent him back to do more reporting on the rest of the story, he moaned and fumed.

When I read his proposal for "The Tipping Point," I found it to be warmed over epidemiology. It was based on a concept and a perception so old it was already an ancient saying about straw and a camel's back. But gussied up in Malcolm's writing style, it struck the epidemiologically naive as brilliant. Brilliant enough to win an advance of more than $1 million.

Angostura• 13 years ago

Looks quite plausible: http://web.med.harvard.edu/healthcaucus/bg_rensberger.html

jessep• 13 years ago

Yeah, this comment is my favorite part of the story. Hilarious to have someone with such direct experience commenting. Assuming they are who they say they are :)

kiba2• 13 years ago

If you want actual scientific knowledge, read a textbook, not a breezy popular science book written by some journalist dude.

For example, I am taking a CMU OLI course on introductory statistics, which is about 216 pages long. I am in it for 29 days at 151 pages thus far, which means I am about 70% complete. I study an hour a day, does about 30 minutes of review minimum each day.

I admit that it's not the most exciting subject to learn and requires a lot of work. Although the subject isn't actually boring to learn. However, armed with knowledge of statistics, I will be able to spot more bullshit coming from writers like Malcolm Gladwell.

Popular science books are not to be trusted, at the very least, without a subject matter expert's recommendation. They should be viewed as only entertainment.

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

I'm afraid you're comparing two entirely different genres. People who read popular non-fiction (on science, economics etc.) aren't looking to learn concepts the way you are. They, I surmise, want to read interesting stories that can be explained using science/economics etc.

In other words, you're attempting to learn the science so you can apply it, while most others are attempting to read stories which can be explained using science.

kiba2• 13 years ago

In other words, you're attempting to learn the science so you can apply it, while most others are attempting to read stories which can be explained using science.

I don't need to apply the scientific knowledge. I have gratification in knowing how reality work.

sn41• 13 years ago

The problem with popular science books is that they are written by journalists untrained in science. It should be scientists who write popular works. There are several scientists who have written great works which are neither difficult, nor dumbed down - for example, Steinhaus' "Mathematical Snapshots", Einstein and Infeld's "The Evolution of Physics", Schrodinger's "What is life?" and even delightful works such as Faraday's "Chemical history of a candle".

With the hypercompetitiveness of modern scientific careers, scientists who take time off to write popular expositions are looked down upon. The problem is not Malcolm Gladwell, the problem is the insularity of modern scientists.

tempestn• 13 years ago

I've heard good things about Hawking's books as well, although haven't read any yet.

lutusp6• 13 years ago

The problem with popular science books is that they are written by journalists untrained in science. It should be scientists who write popular works.

Yes, perhaps, but you need to realize something -- scientists who write popular books often pay a very high price. Not always, there are exceptions, but Carl Sagan is a perfect example of someone who did a lot of public good by popularizing science and scientific topics, but it ruined his scientific career.

Most scientists understand this -- to write a popular science book or article may send the signal to other scientists that you don't have anything more serious to write about. As a reward for such important projects as Cosmos, Sagan was denied membership in the National Academy of Sciences, something extraordinary given his actual scientific accomplishments.

For balance, we can look at Leon Lederman ("The God Particle") and Stephen Hawking (several well-received books) who seem not to have suffered unduly for their popularizations of science. But the risk is real.

lazyant• 13 years ago

does Asimov count?

jetru• 13 years ago

Is this the same story with Freakonomics?

I listen to their podcast and they seem pretty intelligent and don't really drawn crazy conclusions and always advice with a pinch of salt.

riffraff• 13 years ago

I'd suppose there is a continuum from "totally made up" and the "100% true fact" and freakonomics leans a bit closer to the latter than gladwell, but e.g. the "names" prediction in the book was totally off (though I can't find the reference for this now).

shicky• 13 years ago

is this 'Winner' and 'Loser' ?

kareemm• 13 years ago

Funny, I both started David and Goliath because I wanted to be entertained, and stopped about 10% of the way in because his constant extrapolations from anecdote to Gladwellian Law or Rule made me realize D&G was like a Buzzfeed article: entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying.

natural219• 13 years ago

As a personal data point, I grew up reading lots of "entertaining" books that claimed to have intellectual value, but in hindsight didn't really end up being that intelligent. My early thought heroes were John Stossel, Chuck Palahniuk, Ayn Rand, the Freakonomics guys, and Michael Crichton. While my views have grown more sophisticated over the years, those early adventures into "intellectual" topics eventually led me to study these topics in more depth and expose me to new, more complicated ideas.

So Gladwell's writings, if not specific scientific, may at least have some pedagogical value. Their entertainment value is certainly not questioned.

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

I guess after the magic 10,000 hours of reading you became an expert on reading.

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

After 20,000 hours you get so good you can read in the bath without getting the pages wet. At that point you are ready to turn pro.

onebaddude3• 13 years ago

It's funny that people here are mocking Gladwell and Diamond for presenting popularized, simplified interpretations of the science, but those people are doing the same thing by simplifying the works of the authors.

There's nothing "magic" about 10,000 hours. The implication is that hard work, practice and luck play a bigger role in success than most people believe. It's a theory. Sorry if it was too nuanced for you.

debacle3• 13 years ago

Things by Palahniuk and Rand can have a ton of intellectual value. Anthem is a good story, and everything I've read by Palahnuik has been well written. They make you think, and even if you don't come to the same conclusions as the author wants you to, at least you can see how they got there.

dorkrawk2• 13 years ago

I agree. If you judge a book by what you get out of it rather than what the author's ideas and motivations are you'll probably enjoy your reading a lot more.

drblast2• 13 years ago

Why Chuck Palahniuk? Doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the list.

He's got an incredibly creative writing style and pulls things off, like writing a novel in second-person, that not many authors could.

And I never got the impression of intellectual pretentiousness from any of his books.

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

There seems to be something different about, say, Rand vs. Gladwell.

With Rand, you kind of know these are her opinions. They are ideology. Much like listening to the Right vs. the Left in ideological debates.

But, with Gladwell, he delivers his conclusions as fact, based on "scientific" research. He observes very specific phenomena and draws concrete conclusions, then generalizes to a broader point. But, he doesn't say "here's what I think". He says, "here's what the data says".

With Rand too, you also know that she has a personal belief system/agenda. Gladwell writes as an objective reporter, just delivering the "facts".

willvarfar2• 13 years ago

For everyone feeling cheated by Malcolm Gladwell, there is relief in sight! Buy books by Simon Singh e.g. The Code Book and Fermat's Last Theorem; after his court tangle with homeopathy he needs all the royalties he can get!

digitalengineer2• 13 years ago

Could you elaborate a bit about his 'court tangle'? I'm reading 'Bad Science' which also talks about Homeopathy and it basically says homeopathy is relying on the Placebo effect, the attention patients receive and the probability a lot of people will resort to homeopathy when it's really, really bad. That's usually the point when it starts getting better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_(book)

willvarfar2• 13 years ago

Apologies, his tangle was chiropractic not homeopathic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCA_v._Singh

My general point was two-fold:

1) he is an excellent popular science writer. He has a PhD in particle physics, and his books are well researched and well received.

2) we all want him to prosper from writing so he keeps writing :)

mmcnickle• 13 years ago

He was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association for writing in a newspaper column that they promoted "bogus treatments".

Edit: Too late. I'd second the book recommendations though, they're excellent.

limelight• 13 years ago

I don't read Gladwell to learn anything. And that's okay—there are plenty of other places I read to learn.

Like the rest of The New Yorker, what Gladwell provides is interesting, entertaining, and realistic stories. Whether those stories are entirely true or not just isn't relevant. It's about entertaining myself and occasionally having a thought-provoking discussion about Gladwell's work. None of this actually affects how I do my work or interact with the world.

However, a good portion of this enjoyment is contingent on the stories ostensibly not being fiction, largely due to the "stranger than fiction" effect. If Gladwell were to write complete fiction, then we wouldn't have plausible lines of reality to reference in his work, or the entertainment of seeing the convolutions he makes in bending reality to his thesis.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

You should have stopped long ago.

Malcolm Gladwell as an entertainer is great. Gladwell as a pundit quoted by (and presumably influencing) real decision-makers ... has me steaming in frustration. He is dangerous.

Ygg22• 13 years ago

Is he much worse than CSI? I mean I don't trust both, they have right details (like some study proving one thing, or name of disease), but overall miss the big picture.

Also it seems that he sometimes hits a mark. I remember his article on criminal Profilers being mostly correct as far as I could tell.

Anyone who trust a journalist unconditionally and blindly is a fool. They are paid to pique your interest and entertain you, not find out the truth (most people don't like the truth, I definitely wouldn't like all the truth about me to come into light). Just like someone that thinks that most crime TV series depict real life.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

I don't hear senior people in all sorts of professions referencing CSI the way I hear them referencing Malcolm Gladwell.

lutusp6• 13 years ago

Is he much worse than CSI?

People who accept CSI confuse fantasy and reality. People who accept Gladwell confuse a contrived reality with a real one. I think the risk posed by the latter category is greater than the former, because the latter are more difficult to separate from their superficial grasp of reality.

debacle3• 13 years ago

The problem is that Gladwell doesn't label himself a journalist or amateur - he speaks with a voice of authority about things he is not an authority on.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

CSI is pretty bad. WOrse than Gladwell. If you have been following how the Massachusetts crime lab screwed up thousands of investigations, you know CSI is putting an unrealistically competent face on a topic about which people should be very skeptical. Gladwell isn't as tendentious and propagandistic.

visakanv3• 13 years ago

Any "real decision-maker" who makes decisions because of pop-writers... was probably going to screw things up anyway.

Gladwell isn't dangerous, ignorance is.

linux_devil• 13 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell's piece is like a fiction in Decision making . I will still prefer likes of Daniel Khaneman and others. Should have read "Thinking Fast and Slow" long ago.

jpalomaki• 13 years ago

Thinking Fast and Slow at least mentions many similar experiments and the results are often interesting, so it is probably worth reading if the topic is of interest (and it probably should be).

I have't looked at the actual research behind the topics they are covering, but at least there seems to be a good reference list in the book so it should be possible dig out the articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...

crntaylor4• 13 years ago

I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn".

The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else.

I think the same rush we get from learning something counter-intuitive and novel is the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones.

Edit: It occurs to me that this comment could be seen as an example of what it describes...

mmaunder• 13 years ago

Upvoted comment for making me feel just a little bit smarter.

svantana• 13 years ago

Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought.

In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven't thought of it before.

jamesrom2• 13 years ago

You should write a book about it...

visakanv3• 13 years ago

So I think of people like Gladwell as pop-fusion artists, like say, Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble. They often get disproportionately rewarded (as compared to "real" jazz artists), but they DO do a lot for a lot of people by introducing them to something they otherwise might not have considered.

yesbabyyes• 13 years ago

Interesting theory. I like it.

Nice to see you around here, Svante!

nileshtrivedi• 13 years ago

I have read this elsewhere. "Interestingness" is a fine balance between familiarity and surprise.

someperson• 13 years ago

This might also apply to NPR Planet Money.

Seems to plague the softer/human sciences like economics, psychology and anthropology more than physics/chemistry/maths (though these fields have there own poor journalism)

valleyer• 13 years ago

This might also apply to NPR Planet Money

You think so? Planet Money routinely brings on actual economists to explain things in plain language. And when they don't, they're just describing not-very-technical but interesting things (e.g., how the music industry works, what those complex securities that ruined the economy were, etc.). They don't often (ever, that I can recall) come up with new phenomena.

dcre2• 13 years ago

I worry about this when I listen, but in general I agree with the other commenter that they do pretty well at giving a voice to real experts.

agravier• 13 years ago

It's like Daniel Dennett's deepities, just a little less shallow, to cater for the intellectually self-absorbed. (<s> Look at my mice bite-size analysis! </s>)

downandout5• 13 years ago

It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else.

IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group. Nothing wrong with it, just an (unscientific) observation.

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

"IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group."

Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now.

IsaacL2• 13 years ago

Is this where you came across the concept of "insight porn"? http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-...

There's an interesting possibility that our brain actually gives us a neurochemical "hit" every time we encounter a particularly juicy piece of insight porn. The reason for this is evolutionary: insights are basically the recognition of deep patterns that explain seemingly unrelated phenomena, which lets us "compress" our knowledge and so increase our understanding of the world. (It's not that our stone age ancestors were developing scientific theories, but they had many complex things in their environment to predict: the weather, animal behaviour, their own social networks, other hunter-gather tribes, etc).

The pleasure gained from studying mathematics, or listening to complicated pieces of music (esp classical, where complex pieces might be based on simple underlying patterns) are good examples. Humour might be a complementary reward circuit, giving us a psychological hit when we discover something that contradicts our worldview.

(I'm aware that the preceding paragraphs was themselves a piece of insight porn :)

StavrosK4• 13 years ago

Whenever someone says "There's a possibility X is evolutionary", nowadays, I mentally continue it with "The reason for this is rationalization".

As an aside, what's it called when you come up with an explanation of something to fit the facts the way you want them? Hindsight bias comes to mind, but it's not exactly that. More like a mixture of hindsight/confirmation bias and wishful thinking.

mtts2• 13 years ago

Jared Diamond counter-intuitive? I'm with you on the other three but Guns Germs & Steel always struck me as very "D'uh".

crntaylor4• 13 years ago

One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art -- and could therefore be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the human race.

I'm not saying that his argument is wrong, but it definitely runs against the prevailing wisdom. Similarly "Collapse" (the idea that the success or failure of societies is predictable) and "Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities).

Maybe those things are obvious to you, but I don't think they're obvious to most people.

[0] http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in...

jokull• 13 years ago

Add Michael Lewis to the list

math2• 13 years ago

And if you combine insight porn with finance porn are people extra addicted? (we hope so: http://backrecord.com .. blatent plug)

math2• 13 years ago

I don't think this deserved to be down-voted - the website is relevant to the discussion and we've put countless hours into trying to make a useful tool and we've already taken the concept further than anyone else that I'm aware of. My comment is making fun at what we're doing, but what we're doing is not a joke. I would sharing what we've done as one of my more useful comments, yet it is the only one to be downvoted.

6ren2• 13 years ago

"new scientist" etc also play this role. Though fairly accurate as far as it goes, it is pop-science.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

There's another great one from SMBC about how to tell the difference between a math enthusiast from a mathematician.

I won't try to find it since I'm on mobile, but it's just as good.

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

I like Stephen Collins' take on it - http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/beyond_the_beyond/2009/07/...

spdegabrielle• 13 years ago

I think the significant difference between 'new scientist' weekly news and many others is they stick to reporting, and leave the proselytising to others - though they often people a space to make their claims.

lsc• 13 years ago

the destructive thing about this style of writing[1] isn't that the readers like to feel smart or superior to others; the destructive thing about it is that instead of distilling research with an aim to convey useful information, he distills that research with an aim to find the most shocking or counterintuitive possibility, even if the evidence isn't really strong enough to support an 'extraordinary claim' You actually get dumber (well, not dumber, but you gain incorrect models, which can make you look and act dumber) from reading Gladwell's work.

Really, though, I'd argue that most business books I've read had a similar feel. 99% bullshit, and the 1% based on actual science is often based on very shaky evidence.

[1]Gladwell's style is pretty familiar if you've read many business books. Very light, very easy to read; it sounds very authoritative, but is at best 99% fluff and 1% actual solid information. When the fluff is actual fluff (case studies, etc...) so long as you find it entertaining, there's no harm. The problem comes when the fluff is demonstrably incorrect and contributes to you making real-world poor decisions.

bluecalm• 13 years ago

One important difference is that Gladwell is pretty good writer and doesn't really go too much into specific personal/business advice. Vast majority of business/personal development books on the other hand display crappy writing and live off people buying their promises hoping to actually find some practical advice. In that landscape Gladwell stands out: he actually give a lot of references you can check yourself, he doesn't give harmful advice and he delivers what should be expected from him - entertainment and great topics for conversations.

nefasti• 13 years ago

Here in Brazil, people love to cite Gladwell 10k hours like he is a GOD. In a recent startup accelerator demo day it was cited by both a famous entrepreneur and a journalist. I always cringe when I see it cited as pure truth and in a bad context. My conclusion is people do it do sound cool and smarter. The "insight porn" was spot on.

ebbv• 13 years ago

In my experience this stuff is not nearly as popular with actual nerds/geeks/hackers as it is with MBA/CEO/executives.

FrojoS• 13 years ago

I'm afraid you are spot on. I often realize the bs and then keep on reading, because A) Its so fun. B) I hope I might still learn something useful.

I suspect school and teachers are part of the problem. Even at the best universities I would spot professors claiming things which were obviously wrong or not based on strong scientific evidence but presented as if. So all you can do is keeping to plow on hoping you learn more truth than not.

Ok, so, as someone who admits to read this stuff I would like to ask. Is there anyone who was able to break their addiction? And if so, what helped?

Also, is there a good book review source which spots "insight porn". I usually check Amazon before buying a book to check if its outright bullshit but that approach doesn't work all that well.

dhimes• 13 years ago

The field of popular nutrition is exploding with this. "Warrior diet" and "Paleo diet" are two recent ideas that come to mind.

But as I type this it occurs to me: This might extend to beyond nerds. This effect might be what is addictive about Oprah or Dr. Phil (relationship insights), or even the bobble-heads on tv talking about the latest source of their political rage, or even sports junkies.

darkarmani• 13 years ago

The Paleo or Primal diet idea has been around for a long time. I think it has gotten more momentum as more cherry-picked scientific studies have been found.

triplesec• 13 years ago

I believe it's unfair to include Diamond in this genre, as although he's popular, he's also a thinker (and prof) with an academic's consistency and attention to data. The Freakonomics guys are also closer to data, but episodically popularising rather than Diamond's coherent meta-narratives. The biggest argument you could level against Diamond might be one of leaning too heavily on "geographical determinism", which he can veer towards at times.

ijk2• 13 years ago

Diamond is a little different, but he is working outside of his original field and produces very mixed responses from anthropologists (e.g. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-... ).

ghaff• 13 years ago

I agree with both your points--at least with respect to Guns Germs and Steel. Arguably he way overextended his basic research in later works.

An interesting supplement to Diamond is Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. To greatly oversimplify, Morris endorses the idea of a Western core headstart (with credit to Diamond) but then basically says "Well, yeah, of course that's the case." But how does that explain how things ended up millennia later. A good read.

Another broader point though is that serious researchers are always going to put down popularizers who write books people actually read. But no one is going to read serious researchers except other serious researchers. Of course, you can go too far in the popularization direction and I tend to agree Malcolm Gladwell is a great example of that.

kylebrown2• 13 years ago

Worth mentioning that the Freakonomics guys (Donohue and Levitt) work tying abortion law to crime reduction was debunked. There was a bug in the regression analysis code, "coding errors" (as in typos while copying data tables from print sources), and flat out statistical errors (most egregious was their use of total arrests instead of arrests per capita).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...

SiVal• 13 years ago

Diamond is very much in the same camp. In the introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel he stated that his motivation for the work was to come up with evidence with which to counter an Occam's Razor assumption (basically, that certain groups had done more smart things because they were smarter) that contradicted his campus political theory. The "academic's consistency" is the lawyer's consistency of only making the arguments that support what he has decided in advance to support, and the "attention to detail" is attention to only those details that support his case. The fact that his book presented no evidence in favor of the Occam's Razor position (the reason certain groups do more smart things is because they are smarter) but only a list of possible counter-arguments makes it not an investigation of an issue, but an attempt to defend a pre-existing political position.

Even anthropologists sharing the same campus politics have been unwilling to endorse Diamond's arguments with any real enthusiasm.

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

"developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else."

It doesn't seem limited to nerds, though. These books are always top sellers in places like airport book stores, so there's got to be a wider audience than that. If anything, I'd say these are very middlebrow books that hit a sweet spot in making college-educated (though not necessarily nerdy or even particularly smart) people feel smarter. They're like the USA Today distillations of behavioral and neuroscience research.

The nerdier equivalent would be TED.

flanbiscuit• 13 years ago

It's also probably why we read sites like HN, so we can feel like we know something others don't... or know something before others.

Sheepshow• 13 years ago

Is it really fair to lump Jared Diamond in with Malcom Gladwell? Diamond writes about a career of firsthand research, and has won a Pulitzer prize. His field of study (traditional societies) is by its very nature shrinking daily, and requires serious dedication to observe firsthand. In contrast, every single human on earth has experienced a difficult assignment. So yes, while both Diamond and Gladwell overgeneralize based on a small sample size, Diamond's pool of potential samples is orders of magnitude smaller.

larrys• 13 years ago

"the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones." [1]

The question is would anyone have thought anything of PG's essays before he became "PG" that he is today? Not that people didn't read them but it seem now that anything that he has written or writes takes on such status that people are less likely to question or disagree with any conclusions.

[1] Also noting that PG's (at least the ones's I've seen) essays are always proofed by others it would be interesting to get a sense of the type of comments and changes that are made post that proofing.

meowface• 13 years ago

Well, it's not just that he's been successful in the past, but that to this day his advice and mentoring helps produce many successful startups.

When someone achieves repeated and consistent success over many years (say, Warren Buffett), it is wise to listen to what they have to say if they're willing to share their knowledge and experience.

And also, HN isn't full of nearly as many mindless zombies as many other sites. When pg posts something contentious or controversial, usually there's debate about it in the comments.

the_watcher• 13 years ago

The reason PG is the YC founder we hear about is his essays, not the other way around. Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston were all just as much founders as he was.

wmil• 13 years ago

Gladwell's books aren't aimed at nerds in the HN sense. They're actually targeted at people in communications / advertising who want an edge and also something to read on the plane.

That's what makes him so influential.

wisty• 13 years ago

The Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond are more or less scientists. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist. There's a difference.

Both Steven Levitt and Jared Diamond devote a lot of ink over whether or not their theories are testable, while Malcolm Gladwell tends to just find anecdotes which seem to back his theories up.

pajop• 13 years ago

I'm trying to think now what would be the opposite of this? Books that are completely counter-intuitive, that forces you to rethink your original Weltanschaunng in the first place - Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" and Nassim Taleb's "AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder" comes to mind. Even rereading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" can give you this counter-intuitive insight.

Tycho• 13 years ago

The problem I have with your comment is that you describe something auspicious and then slap a derogatory label on it and thus unfairly decry it as problematic. If insight equates to truth, and counter-intuitiveness equates to challenging our flawed assumptions, and 'face-value' equates to lucid and well-argued, then what exactly is there to complain about? Just because you find a formula behind something, doesn't make it a problem.

hingisundhorsa• 13 years ago

Could someone help me out, I've read Pinker's criticisms, Chablis' and others, but I don't feel convinced because they all seem to be generic attacks on accuracy. From their articles, I was not able to identify a specific point that Gladwell has made that is false. Lets take for example, his most recent book, David & Goliath. I was impressed by his unusual look at the David coming down the valley story in a new light including Goliath being a sufferer of pitiutary defect (hence the weak vision). Is that analysis somehow wrong? It doesn't seem to be any more wrong than other analysis I've seen, eg: Pinker's claim that violence has been decreasing over the ages.

lutusp6• 13 years ago

From their articles, I was not able to identify a specific point that Gladwell has made that is false.

There are many such cases, easy to uncover. As just one example, his remarks about easy versus difficult problem solving relied on a preliminary study that failed replication when applied to a larger experimental group, a fact he omitted from his book.

I was impressed by his unusual look at the David coming down the valley story in a new light including Goliath being a sufferer of pitiutary defect (hence the weak vision). Is that analysis somehow wrong?

To answer, I have to ask "is fiction wrong?" Can a fictional account about fictional characters ever truly be called "wrong"? Whatever novel conclusion made about the David and Goliath story must confront the fact that it's an anecdote about an anecdote.

thesadman• 13 years ago

OP asked for a specific point. You wrote: "his remarks about easy versus difficult problem solving relied on a preliminary study that failed replication when applied to a larger experimental group, a fact he omitted from his book". Could a layperson work out which specific point you're referring to and then understand it? Perhaps you'd care to elaborate.

onebaddude3• 13 years ago

but I don't feel convinced because they all seem to be generic attacks on accuracy."

It's the same mentality that drives people to criticize every article here with an I know better, this is wrong attitude.

Malcolm Gladwell is a popular entertainer, he has a new book out which will surely be a best-seller, so he gets attacked. In the same way that people will attack the work of Ben Affleck or Michael Buble. That's unfortunately how our society works.

If policy makers are quoting Gladwell on important issues, that isn't his fault.

downandout5• 13 years ago

This seems like a fit of jealousy to me. Malcom Gladwell makes no claim that the observations mentioned in his books meet any scientific standards. His points are usually correct (though obvious to many); in this case his point is that adversity often breeds success in ambitious people (e.g. Princeton students, not necessarily random students at a public college). Perhaps he cherry picks examples to prove those points, but having read his books and the recent criticisms of them, I still don't feel that I have been lied to.

Gladwell does what many successful authors in this genre do: he tells us what we already intuitively know in a palatable way that makes the concepts feel new. It makes people feel justified in their belief that they can overcome seemingly daunting challenges when they see it in print by a noted author. His books may not reveal groundbreaking results of scientific studies, but they justify the views of the kinds of people that read his books, and that will tend to make them successful regardless of the scientific accuracy of any examples mentioned in his books.

antimagic2• 13 years ago

Huh?

"His points are usually correct (though obvious to many); in this case his point is that adversity often breeds success in ambitious people."

No. Just no. Did you not read the article? The study demonstrating this "point" was a low-powered study. A more highly powered study failed to reproduce the result. Now, at best you could say that the result only applies to "ambitious people", but that remains to be proved - after the Canadian result, the null hypothesis has to be that making the task superficially more difficult has no impact on people's ability to complete the task. In other words, Gladwell's hypothesis is unproven and unjustified.

downandout5• 13 years ago

Actually, you (and the jealous author of the critical article) are comparing apples to oranges. It is a safe assumption that a group of random students at a public Canadian university are not nearly as ambitious as a group of students at an impossibly competitive university such as Princeton. The study does in fact show that adversity often breeds success in ambitious people.

So, the results were as expected. The ambitious group was inspired by the challenge. A group of average public college students were neither inspired nor deterred by it. And I would bet that my house that a group of homeless people would be significantly deterred by it. It is an apples to oranges comparison that in no way disproves Gladwell's hypothesis.

tezka• 13 years ago

sorry to say this, but this is exactly why MG is dangerous for the society. Because people start perpetuating myths and fictions passed to them in entertaining tone as facts. They start narrating them to kids and gradually turn them into common wisdom. To whoever reads this shit as entertainment. Please don't. Go watch a movie, listen to standup, watch porn, whatever else makes you feel less board. Pop science is perhaps even more important than scientific journals and shouldn't be crapped on the way MG does. I just can't fathom why people are such entertainment junkies anyways.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

Here's an idea: instead of lazily relying on people to come up with clever ways to say things for you, come up with your own ways of viewing the world. People who rely on baseless aphorisms to make themselves seem more interesting belong in the same circle of Hell as those who name-drop. The example that the author uses, "the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty," isn't even useful or palatable.

jrs99• 13 years ago

We intuitively know that if the print is hard to read that more people will be successful at solving the problem?

golergka• 13 years ago

I think that it's far more universal problem:

http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina...

lutusp6• 13 years ago

Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

As long as people think believing stands higher than understanding, people like Gladwell will find a wide audience.

cormullion• 13 years ago

Another review (of the book) at

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/malcolm-gladwell-backlas...

"Gladwell is the non-fiction equivalent of Dan Brown."

Brakenshire2• 13 years ago

So, Gladwell promises that our alleged misunderstanding has “consequences for everything from the way we educate our children to the way we fight crime and disorder”. Consequences for everything! That is the hard sell, the first free rock of intellectual crack.
The examples of “everything” include basketball coaching, policing, university science, Martin Luther King, and the Impressionists. (The waft of luxury art-history tourism in the Impressionists sequence is only the most obvious example of how Gladwell is now the non-fiction equivalent of Dan Brown.) The promise that such heterogeneous matter can be governed by one or two big ideas and understood through them constitutes the main attraction of the Gladwellian literary genre. Armed with these “ideas”, you won’t have to think for yourself ever again.

Ouch.

seehafer• 13 years ago

TL;DR Yes.

bborud• 13 years ago

Which is harder: to make people like Gladwell scientifically sound or to make the scientifically sound more entertaining?

While I strongly agree that he does himself, and those curious about science, a great disservice by what one might label as intellectual laziness and sloppiness, there is a need to make science and interesting ideas more available to the public. So while the criticism of Gladwell's cherry-picking and rough treatment of the truth appears to be valid, we should ask ourselves "what have I done to make ideas more accessible to others"?

I think this is why we love people like Carl Sagan. He made science accessible. He showed a whole generation of kids that science is cool and interesting and beautiful. Without (to my knowledge) compromising scientific integrity.

visakanv3• 13 years ago

Bill Nye the Science Guy Show: "Rules"

Objective: Change the world.

Produce a TV show that gets kids and adults excited about science, so that the United States will again be the world leader in technology, innovation, and sound management of the environment.

For example, when our audience is of age, we'd like them to produce the best transportation systems in the world, e.g. cars, electric cars, trains, and aircraft.

Rules of the Road

- The show is entertainment first; curriculum content and presentation of specific facts come later. Ideally, school curricula will follow us.

- All the science we see has to be real science. No fictional “molecular resynthesizer“ machines that perform magic tricks, for example.

- The science being explored provides the drama. For example, there is no time spent looking for someone's stolen lab coat.

- Science Guy is always himself. He could play another character as the Science Guy playing another character. He wears a lab coat and safety glasses for a reason. If he takes them off, it's for a reason.

- Science Guy's reality is television. He can jump from place to place the way a viewer would expect anyone on television to be able to do. There is no need for something like the “Way-Back" machine or the “Transporter” or the "Door to Anywhere." However, the “monitor in the field" can show us supplementary video, e.g. condensation after the walk-in freezer sequence in the pilot.

- Host interacts with guests. kids, other scientists, and celebrities, as peers: E.g. “Hi, Joey; Hi, Michael; "Hi, Cindy; Hi Hammer." / "Hi, Bill."

- Show takes place as much as possible in the field. The world is the laboratory.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

Richard Dawkins does a great job of this too.

alexdowad• 13 years ago

Should I stop believing Malcolm Gladwell? This title was a non sequitur for me, as I have never heard of Malcolm Gladwell and so never started believing him. Interesting article though.

ctdonath4• 13 years ago

Rule of thumb: any headline which asks a yes/no question has an answer of "no".

6ren2• 13 years ago

Scary fact: everything you "know" is based on convincing storytelling. Perhaps reading Gladwell is a good way to be reminded of this, that all knowledge is tentative, subject to revision.

(If yours isn't, you're dogmatic, an epistemological fundamentalist! Even logic has completeness/consistency limitations. At least, those are the limitations we know of so far...).

foobarbazqux2• 13 years ago

When you say storytelling, I think you're only talking about knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance is equally valid, and is based on direct experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_by_description

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_by_acquaintance

mpweiher• 13 years ago

Yes.

For example, the story about TIMMs scores showing that math ability is correlated not with talent but with effort is completely bogus, and obviously so if you look at the actual studies.

First, the effect only appeared for 2 age levels in one year of taking, all the other age levels did not show this correlation. Second, the effect only shows at the national level, if you compare whole countries. It disappears completely as soon as you go down to school or class levels.

Which means that his claim in the book is completely bogus: yes, nations are not more talented at math than others (duh!), but individuals still are, completely contrary to his claims.

That goes way beyond just cherry picking results.

siliconviking• 13 years ago

Not to seem unfairly partial towards Steve Jobs, but after Malcolm Gladwell's repeated rants against him, I started trusting his (Gladwell's) judgement a whole lot less.

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

Between this and yesterday's Gladwell-doubting article it seems Malcolm has reached a tipping point of his very own.

thewarrior• 13 years ago

If not people like Gladwell then what should we be really reading ?

noonespecial• 13 years ago

Gladwell does the literary equivalent of this:

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Barack-Obama-C...

The world he presents is a cartoon caricature of the real world. In the drawing linked above, you can clearly recognize the president, but you wouldn't use the drawing to fit him for a hat. His prominent features are overemphasized in interesting and humorous ways for the purpose of sparking delighted recognition in the viewer.

Gladwell does the same thing in words. He presents us with a caricature of our world with its features humorously exaggerated in order to spark the same sort of recognition.

tl;dr. Its a funny. Don't use it for science.

gnaffle2• 13 years ago

It's not a very good comparison. First, it's not presented as funny, it's presented as science, complete with links to studies. If you ask most people reading Gladwell, they will believe his theories.

Second, it's not that he exaggerates something, but often he's flat-out wrong. The fascination he sparks is the "oh, that's an unlikely fact I wouldn't have believed was true, had it not been for the fact that these science studies cited here proves it."

d233• 13 years ago

Second, it's not that he exaggerates something, but often he's flat-out wrong.

Eh, is it though? I confess I haven't read much by him, but it seems like most of his works are truisms anyway (e.g. if something's hard, it'll make you work harder!).

lotsofcows• 13 years ago

Believe? Odd choice of word. If a subject is important to you, read around it and make up your own mind. Gladwell usually cites his sources. Just don't fall into the trap of only reading the given sources, look for updated and contraindicative papers.

arshia• 13 years ago

Great piece by Chris Chabris in Slate http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... - "I thought he was sincerely misunderstanding the science, but he knows exactly what he is doing."

mattmanser• 13 years ago

There was an article yesterday which I found far better written and researched on here yesterday trashing Gladwell's science that didn't get much traction:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6519843

krmmalik• 13 years ago

What did it for me was a TED talk of Gladwell, a good few years ago. It was a talk about marketing and the point he wanted to make was that diversification (multiple lines of the same product) was the answer. I took it for granted at the time - and having read "The Tipping Point" before then, I felt he was the man to follow. But having tried it it in the real world, I realised most of what he was saying just didn't hold.

logicallee• 13 years ago

Gladwell's books are both valid and surprising. Unfortunately, the parts that are valid aren't surprising, and the parts that are surprising aren't valid.

kabisote• 13 years ago

are based on what's really going on

Where can we actually get accurate information of what's really going on? News? Government? Businesses? Church? Blogs? Forums?

ctdonath4• 13 years ago

The issue is just a larger-scale version of a common social problem I constantly see on blog discussions:

Critics demand encyclopedic thoroughness for what is little more than brief casual conversation.

Someone writes a pithy & insightful blog post (a la HN). It fits a convenient size suitable for the medium (1-10 paragraphs). Rather than responding to the substantive point of the post, critics nit-pick some obscure point which the author glossed over precisely because more detail runs at odds to the medium. To wit: the criticism amounts to demands for peer-reviewed scientific process with rock-solid presentation & references, when said critic would in no way actually read such material.

Gladwell's (and many other writers', ex.: 1491 and A History Of The World In Six Glasses) works are like this. The books are not weighty tomes, they are not peer-reviewed, they are not scientific papers with rigorous analysis of the material. They are lightweight overviews of interesting insights, appealing to many people (enough so that some expend energy loudly criticizing the works), and providing launching points for those so motivated to further pursue the subject (such as the would-be pro golfer testing the "10,000 hours" theory by actually doing it). If Gladwell et al wrote books the way critics demand, critics (and pretty much everyone else) would never bother reading them.

"the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." - Ratatouille

protonfish• 13 years ago

This is a false dichotomy - there is no reason that being factually accurate prevents writing from being entertaining and accessible. Both can be done in the same piece if the author is willing. It is unfortunate that many science writers don't care about good writing and many writers don't care about truth.

DanBC3• 13 years ago

They are lightweight overviews of interesting insights, appealing to many people (enough so that some expend energy loudly criticizing the works), and providing launching points for those so motivated to further pursue the subject

What use is an overview if it's wrong?

Here's an example of the problem:

(http://www.social-consciousness.com/2013/10/ten-simple-thing...)

This blog got posted to HN. The first point in the post says:

Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it's actually been proven to be an effective strategy for overcoming depression. In a study cited in Shawn Achor's book, The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their depression with either medication, exercise, or a combination of the two. The results of this study really surprised me. Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels to begin with, the follow up assessments proved to be radically different:

A blog cites a pop sci book, which cites a single study. And this is "proof" of a treatment for depression. It feels like it should be true. it repeats something that many people say ("exercise helps depression") and it has some sciencey stuff to support it (endorphins!). It's not homoeopathy or crystal healing.

The main problem is that it is not clear if exercise works for treating depression.

http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004366/exercise-for-depressi...

Exercise is moderately more effective than no therapy for reducing symptoms of depression.

[...]

The reviewers also note that when only high-quality studies were included, the difference between exercise and no therapy is less conclusive.

People do not investigate further. They repeat these factoids and they believe they're promoting science.

ctdonath4• 13 years ago

Relevant quote from the current HN thread History Must Be Curved:

"Science doesn’t follow a mythic positivist ideal but the plural scientific methods described by Feyerabend: a mixture of empiricism, flights of fancy, intuition, aesthetics, doggedness, and jealousy. Scientific theories are underdetermined. Any finite set of facts can support multiple theories, and for a long time the available facts were equally explained by geostationary or geomobile models."

tokenadult• 13 years ago

"I haven't read the book; I'm taking this example from a review in The Wall Street Journal by Christopher F. Chabris, a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y."

Well, come on then. This is just blogspam in that case. We have already discussed Chabris's review (in its longer form from Chabris's blog) here on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510996

We should stop believing ANYONE just because of their name or their previously published writings. We should read anything we read with our minds active, ready to disagree if the facts warrant. And that is what Malcolm Gladwell himself has said in interviews: "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."

redthrowaway• 13 years ago

The piece isn't a review of Gladwell's book, nor is its thesis predicated upon the (de)merits thereof. He's saying Gladwell as a whole, in all of his works, may be Considered Harmful. You don't have to read his latest book to cogently draw that conclusion.

avenger123• 13 years ago

"Don't leave your brain by the door."

The above should be the disclaimer on these types of books. I like Gladwell but there still needs to be some level of critical thinking involved when reading these books.

I like to take the main ideas and do further investigation on my own.

kamakazizuru• 13 years ago

anyone else also feel this way about Tim Ferriss's stuff? I know theres a huge community of 4HWW fanboys around here so don't take it personally. However - I did have the feeling reading most of Ferriss' books that he essentially did just what Gladwell does - say something counterintuitive - back it up with some sort of studies (though he bothers even less to do that than Gladwell does) and even worse - personal anecdotal evidence! (What still cracks me up is - "I put my phone away from my pocket for a week and my sperm count went up" ..Geez).

eric_the_read• 13 years ago

I would just like to point out that this is quite possibly the only violation of Betteridge's Law I've found on HN in... gosh, quite some time. Maybe ever?

tommorris• 13 years ago

Yes.

That was just my adaptive unconscious coming to a rapid blink of an insight rather than a long and convoluted reasoning process. Mr Gladwell seems to think the former is okay though, so I'm sticking with my gut instinct.

pg• 13 years ago

"I haven't read the book"

That could be a useful prelude to writing about it.

unreal37• 13 years ago

Oh but he read a review of it! That's got to be the same as reading it, right?

aero142• 13 years ago

I think his last paragraph sums it up.

"I have long been an admirer of Gladwell's; I wish I could put stories together the way he does. But I'm now afraid to read him. My work, my intellectual life, and even my social and emotional experiences with my family are based on knowing what's really going on--not Gladwell's made-up ideas of how things should be. I don't want to base my reading, or my life, on Gladwell's currency: things that might or might not be true, but which make possible masterful storytelling."

I often have a hard time remembering where I learned something so it makes it hard to keep strait why I think something is true. As a result, I try very hard to avoid talented liars.

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

The article is more about Gladwell than about his latest book.

jamesrom2• 13 years ago

No, the article is clearly about Gladwell's work.

gmisra• 13 years ago

This entire problem would go away if Gladwell's writings were classified as speculative fiction instead of non-fiction.

pjdorrell• 13 years ago

The complaint seems to be that entertaining books are not sufficiently educational.

What I think we should really be complaining about is that educational books are not sufficiently entertaining.

Many of the startup websites promoted on Hacker News go to extreme lengths to reduce "cognitive load" - to make everything as easy as possible for their users to understand what they are doing.

Entertainment is content presented to us in a manner which does not require unpleasant effort on our part to maintain our attention as readers, listeners or viewers.

When text-book writers put the same effort into making their content entertaining as startup websites put into the UX of their websites, then we will have an educational revolution.

Actually, for most people, video is more entertaining than books, so the best results will come from making entertaining videos on technical subjects.

It is much easier to be entertaining if your content is "fluffy", and some of the most entertaining content is about "almost nothing at all", like Seinfeld, for example.

But that is no excuse for neglecting the need to make serious content as entertaining as possible.

To get some ideas about how to make technical content more entertaining, try the following:

* Search for your favourite technical subject on YouTube, and watch the most popular videos.

* Still on YouTube, search for "vlog", or "youtubers", or anything else that leads to videos made specifically for YouTube which include visual and verbal presentation of non-fictional content and commentary. (For example, see Ray William Johnson.)

* Observe the difference.

* Don't just observe the difference. Revisit the technical videos, and identify each point of pain, where the video requires effort of the viewer in a manner that would never have occurred in the "entertaining" videos. It could be things as simple as an extended interval where nothing happens at all, or too much talking and nothing happening on the screen, or the talking consists entirely of reading words that are already on the screen, or action on the screen but no talking, or too much talking about what the presenter is going to talk about. Etc.

Anon84• 13 years ago

When did we start?

drblast2• 13 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell has the same problem as any of the other 100's of authors of those shitty "How to win!" business books.

It's not that what he's saying is not true, it's that you don't get the whole picture, because actually giving you the whole picture would take a whole lot more time to research and wouldn't be half as entertaining.

The best example are the "Good to Great" series of books that espouse what companies should to be successful, neglecting to mention that the majority of the companies held up as examples from the previous book have somehow spectacularly failed. The books aren't predictive because they're based on an extremely flawed methodology that cherry-picks data to fit pre-conceived notions.

Also, success on the scale that most people reading these books aspire to requires a huge amount of luck no matter how hard you work, what short and long-term goals you create, or how early you wake up every day to run four miles.

But most people won't read books titled "Preparing For Modest Success from a Lifetime of Hard Work and Saving" or "Success Secrets: Being Lucky."

YZF• 13 years ago

"I haven't read the book;" - I think we can stop reading the book review right about there.

aschearer• 13 years ago

I don't have any opinion one way or another about Gladwell but it really lowers my opinion of MIT to see them publishing posts such as this. The author has not read the book in question (or for all I know any book by Gladwell) and seems to be regurgitating the argument of a second author. I'd expect this from some rag not MIT.

spinlock• 13 years ago

Should we stop believing book reviewers who haven't read the book?

dcre2• 13 years ago

As one of the comments on the article points out, it's amusing that Steven Pinker is one of the cited critics, given his own record of writing intellectual feel-goodery.

Pinker: "To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken."[1]

[1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-...

codex• 13 years ago

The New Yorker recently ran an article with a bevy of scientific studies on redshirting [1] which confirm Gladwell's latest thesis that adversity improves performance. The relative overachievement of immigrant populations tends to support this view as well, but of course you may have selection bias there.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/young...

jrockway• 13 years ago

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to disbelieve Malcolm Gladwell.

tnorris• 13 years ago

Gladwell responds: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

Related Stories