All Consuming


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?

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


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