(no subject)

[lotesse]

courtesy of a lovely nonnie at ffa: a whole comment full of links about how Malcolm Gladwell is a mendacious douchebag. I had to teach one of his books as part of an adult continuing ed program one time, and I have never felt so ashamed in all my life as I did presenting that tripe to a roomful of my elders as if it had value. I was on-script, so there wasn't much I could do, but it itched.

Comments

[legionseagle]

Oh, Gladwell, that awful, awful man. Jon Ronson did an interview with him (fortunately, I'd not heard of him before though I had been conscious of some of the theories - the zero tolerance one in particular, and 10,000 hours) and the YouTube links are here and here . My personal view judging just on the interviews was much like the guy quoted in one of the links your nonnie provided:

Having seen this process applied to a subject I know a bit about, it calls pretty much everything else Gladwell writes into question. And when I see a scientist looking at Gladwell writing about their area of expertise and saying “Wait, that’s not right…,” well, I know which side I’m going to come down on.

and nothing I've heard since has caused me to change my mind.