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Comment by napierzaza | Hacker News Reader

This article is very strange. It's pretty cynical about Gladwell but his details on him aren't all negative are they? Gladwell sure is good at telling stories and proving points! It has to be a formula. A formula of what pretty much equals good writing and research.

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Entertaining writing, maybe, but certainly not good/education writing. And certainly not good research.

Side note: He may have solid research, but it doesn't come out in the writing.

Perhaps the sad fact is that being entertaining and being accurate are conflicting goals. Who wants to listen to a complex explanation for why the "fifteen minutes of videotaped conversation" method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman )for predicting the likelihood of divorce is flawed due to overfitting issues (see http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010... for details)

Gladwell doesn't let complex facts get in the way of a good story.

It's not meant to be research. If it were, wouldn't it be published in an academic journal?

And to be frank, most research isn't "good research" either. With that said, much of what he's doing is constructing a framework and then building into it. This is actually similar to what is done in a lot of social science research. And Gladwell, often does it much better, even from a purely academic perspective.

The main issue is that millions of people read and scrutinize Gladwell. No one reads "A Critique of 12th Century Eastern European Poetry and the Relationship to Subsurface Climate Volatility".

Yes, it is strange. It's a scathing put-down couched in a pleasant tone. The author believes Gladwell is a fraud but doesn't have the guts to come right out and say it.

A mistake to say I don't have guts. If I thought he was a fraud I'd say that. My other activities, I'll just cite the Alan Turing campaign as one, are indications of my willingness to speak my mind.

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