Eliot Landrum
Plano
Catchy, but unsure of truth — 4 years ago
WORTH CONSUMING!
Gladwell is a catchy writer, but I saw several flaws in his stories that he really didn’t address. Two stories I know are completely false but were used as evidence. It makes me wonder about the rest of the anecdotal evidence he uses as proof. I still think there are very valuable ideas in the book and it is really interesting to read. But the credibility of Gladwell’s research is rather low in my book…

Comments
dandv
San Jose
Which stories are false?
Fixing broken windows has been criticized, including by Freakonomics. Is that one of the stories?
Eliot Landrum
Plano
I don’t have the book handy with me right now, so I can’t recall both off the top of my head.
I know that the Six Degrees experiment is highly criticized:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20020301-000038.html
dandv
San Jose
More exhaustive criticism
The author of that Psychologly Today article, Judith Kleinfield, details the criticism at http://www.uaf.edu/northern/big_world.html