Your points are fair. What I have liked about Gladwell's writings on the issues he treated in Outliers (the only book of his I have read) is that he found authors who do all of the "Present your argument from first principles" and "Present a full, nuance pictures of the state of present day research" you helpfully ask for and then made their work much better known. That's a contribution to public understanding.
Yes, but the present article says that he has not done that for the present book (see the experiment on Princeton students).
I have a feeling that he had some good ideas that he put forth in his first few books; now he's just trying to use his name to sell more books. Which is not something that he denies. So fucking smart...Imagine that there was no law for punishing stealing. You catch a thief, and he admits immediately that he was stealing. Then what do you do?
