#malcolmGladwell has another book, I guess trying to rescue his much-nitpicked #TippingPoint.
IDK if he's a net positive force in the world or not. As a #psychologist I've occasionally looked up the original #research he cites. He tends to portray findings in black-and-white terms, like "People do X in Y situation!" when, most often, I've found the research best supports something like "In some studies 12% of people did X in Y situation despite previous #models predicting it should only be 7%" or "The mean of the P group was 0.3 standard deviations higher than the mean of the Q group".
I see many of his grand arguments as built more or less on a house of cards. Or rather, built on a house of semi-firm jell-o that he treats as if it were solid bricks.
I'm not knocking (most of) the #behavioralScience he cites; Hell, I'm a behavioral scientist and I think this meta-field has a ton to offer. I just think it's important to keep #EffectSize and #PracticalSignificance built into any more complex theories or models that rely on the relevant research instead of assuming that #StatisticalSignificance means "Everything at 100%". I'm sure there's some concise way to say this.
Overall, I think he plays fast and loose with a lot of scientific facts, stacking them up as if they were all Absolutely Yes when they're actually Kinda Maybe or Probably Sort Of and I don't think the weight of the stack can be borne by the accumulated uncertainty and partial applicability indicated by the component research.
So I take everything he says with huge grains of salt and sometimes grimaces, even though I think sometimes he identifies really interesting perspectives or trends.
But is it overall good to have someone presenting behavioral research, heavily oversimplified to fit the author's pet theory? It gets behavioral science in the public eye. It helps many people with no connection to behavioral science understand the potential usefulness and perhaps scale of the fields. It also sets everyone--especially behavioral scientists--up for a fall. It's only a matter of time after each of his books before people who understand the research far better than he does show up to try to set the record straight, and then what has happened to public confidence in behavioral science?
Meh.
#statistics #data #competence
