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Malcolm Gladwell is hardly credible

Mr. Gladwell is not a good person to quote. Sit down with his writings with a critical mind and think about what he is actually doing. His formula is quite simple: he leads with a little story about a common situation that goes wrong, then shows why it goes wrong. He then describes a bunch of "one off" instances where conventional thinking failed. He then applies these amusing little stories to Reality as a whole to develop a Truth. This is what is known as anecdotal evidence, and is completely worthless. Mr. Gladwell makes the worst leaps of inferential logic that I can think of, and then is accepted a fact by his readers.

I have not read "Blink" yet, but I read "The Tipping Point" and have read his articles in "The New Yorker" for years. Over that period of time, he had shown himself time and time again to be a writer of dubious quality. In a nutshell, his career consists of transitioning exceptions into rules, he "creates" paradigm shifts simply for the sake of generating buzz about himself.

J.Ja

Posted by: Justin James   Posted on: 01/26/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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