> That's problematic, because the society we're a part of (HN, the Internet, whatever) has roundly concluded that Gladwell is a farce.
I wish this was backed up with some actual links. Even the comments here asking "Wait, what/who/when decided that Gladwell is a farce?" are met with just comments without more information.
Personally, I am aware of the widespread rejection of how Gladwell presented "10000 hours" in Outliers (and by just googling "Anders Ericsson 10000" it's easy to find plenty of references). And, as Gladwell is a book writer with a point to make in each book, I can understand criticism that he can take conclusions beyond what the data necessarily warrants.
But I'm not, however, aware that the "society" "has roundly concluded that Gladwell is a farce". If you can point to evidence of this I'd definitely like to understand this point.
Alas, I've had to sit through "contrarian" nerds regurgitating various freakish takes that typically drift towards the same ideological valence. Because of this, I quite enjoyed an hour of rather well-informed dunking on Freakonomics.
To an extent, it's salutary: the whole TED-adjacent ecosystem favors storytellers over actual expertise, and it's helpful for me [an author of grant proposals] to review cases where compelling storytelling went too far.
I wish this was backed up with some actual links. Even the comments here asking "Wait, what/who/when decided that Gladwell is a farce?" are met with just comments without more information.
Personally, I am aware of the widespread rejection of how Gladwell presented "10000 hours" in Outliers (and by just googling "Anders Ericsson 10000" it's easy to find plenty of references). And, as Gladwell is a book writer with a point to make in each book, I can understand criticism that he can take conclusions beyond what the data necessarily warrants.
But I'm not, however, aware that the "society" "has roundly concluded that Gladwell is a farce". If you can point to evidence of this I'd definitely like to understand this point.