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MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE

I am not very impressed with Malcolm "Tipping Point" Gladwell.

I always have the feeling that I am getting an intellectual hustle but don't have the time to check it out. Or really care about the subject at hand.

Well, he writes regularly for the New Yorker and I am an over fifty year reader of that magazine.

That should count for something on his side, eh? The magazine is one of the most thoroughly fact checked in the world.

It isn't the facts that get me. It is the glib assumptions and jarring insights. He likes to contradict conventional wisdom. He also likes to make conventional wisdom up.

A premise might be that "we all believe something" which I often do not. Another might be that "we all think that something is linked with something else". I don't.

Often I can see the fallacy of his conclusions, "that almost anyone could be a teacher" or that "success in the NFL cannot be predicted, any quarterback might do well". Laughably wrong.

And so on.

This is all occasioned by yet another book collecting his articles.

I liked the review headline in the NYTimes Book Review:

The themes of this collection are a good way to characterize the author himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning.

For your further fun in deconstructing Gladwell, here is the entire review: Malcom Gladwell, Eclectic Detective.

Conclusion. Gladwell is an excellent middle brow journalist with a flair for provocative subjects. But not one you would want to make any serious life conclusions on.

Labels: books