"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly.
I'm not quite understanding all of the hate on Galdwell, in the parent, the OP, and generally.
You (parent) have glossed over one of the GP's points: Galdwell shares some credible scientific research via the popular press. Yes, there is undoubtedly some spin on it, but chucking out the entirety of Gladwell also dismisses, as just one example, implicit cognition research done at Harvard.
As techies and scientists we can gloat all day that we know correlation doesn't equate to causation, but exploring the stories behind correlations can help uncover the causal chain.
Goodness knows a great deal of qualitative academic research (in top journals, no less) suffer some of the same criticisms Gladwell is enduring. Social sciences accept different ontologies and epistimologies [e.g., 1], and postivism is only one such, albeit the most common. Properly done, interpretivism, too, is accepted.
I think my biggest frustration with the Gladwell-bashing is that even though Gladwell's connections between research and anecdote are sometimes tenuous, those engaging in the critique don't first demonstrate an understanding of the epistimological/ontological standards in social research.
I don't know if I'm too cynical, or if he's too optimistic, but the "as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think" part is where I think he misses the mark. I know too many people who read them as gospel.
If Gladwell Published in Nature or some other primary journal, I could understand the hate, but he publishes in The New Yorker and writes popular books. There is a place for people who expose ideas to broader audiences, and in fact it is important for catching the interest of people who might one day go deeper and challenge some of the ideas.
I would liken him to my exposure to Martin Gardner and AK Dewdney in the back pages of Scientific American as a kid. They weren't setting out to use their platform to do basic research in math and computer science, or to write definitive texts, but instead were popularizing interesting and though-provoking ideas in these area in a manner that was challenging yet accessible to a broader audience.
I know that I definitely would have been far less likely to pursue a career in science and technology had it not been for those who popularized the biz, like those two, Hofstadter, Tracy Kidder, et al.
As for people blinding taking what they consume as gospel, that seems to be a fairly universal human characteristic, whether the source is a cable news outlet, a religion, etc. It is a high bar to set to require all written communication to be immune to misinterpretation or over generalization, and the burden rests more on the audience.
"Fairly characterize the evidence for your position" shouldn't apply only in Nature.
If Gladwell came up with an hypothesis and gave anecdotes both supporting and disproving his hypothesis, that would be "exposing ideas." Instead, he (sometimes implicitly, but usually explicitly) suggests that his hypothesis is a universal law.
Of course, Gladwell writes well. But the OP is exactly right that Gladwell's bread-and-butter is inappropriate extrapolation from a few anecdotes to some pithy "theory of everything."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html
"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly.