> An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.
There's probably a deeper philosophical point to make here between "ART" and "SCIENCE" broadly (and reductively) considered, but I see it as a matter of respect: Do you think the author respects the subject enough to write a factual story that portrays that subject honestly, or is the author doing a cleaned-up piece of tabloid journalism and going for readership and responses, and is simply going to use some misunderstood parts of that subject as props to make a Sweeping Conclusion regardless of what the facts support?
In short: Does the author care about facts, or do they care about making their case?
> An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.
There's probably a deeper philosophical point to make here between "ART" and "SCIENCE" broadly (and reductively) considered, but I see it as a matter of respect: Do you think the author respects the subject enough to write a factual story that portrays that subject honestly, or is the author doing a cleaned-up piece of tabloid journalism and going for readership and responses, and is simply going to use some misunderstood parts of that subject as props to make a Sweeping Conclusion regardless of what the facts support?
In short: Does the author care about facts, or do they care about making their case?