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Comment by ansy | Hacker News Reader

Original from PARC: http://blogs.parc.com/blog/2011/05/from-creation-myth-to-the...

For myself, this is part of why I'm not a big Malcolm Gladwell fan. Whether it's his articles, his TED talks, or his books, I always feel like he's abusing data rather than using data. It's like he flings a bunch of factual snippets at the reader and then quickly segues into his conclusion like a magician performing sleight of hand. There's no logical argument, just here's some stuff and therefore the end. He's a great historian and storyteller; I just could go without his analysis sometimes.

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My greatest problem with Gladwell (and the New Yorker as a whole) is how he tries to write objectively, when it is clear where his opinion stands. Purporting to write objectively is a facade in validating the ideas behind supposed white sterile labs.

To go in hand with the "abuse of data" as you wrote above, very few things are truly objective (even axioms are widely-held beliefs), and part of my problem with Malcolm is this "abuse of data." He doesn't inject enough of himself to support this academic feel.

He is a very good storyteller who writes beyond his understanding.

Just because he doesn't present all the data doesn't mean he didn't perform thorough analysis prior to reaching his conclusion(I don't know for sure that he does either).

You can't write best selling books that read like a paper in a scientific journal. He presents interesting and thought provoking arguments with enough data that you can't immediately disregard them. If afterwards you feel compelled to dig deeper, I say it's a job well done.

And you can't expect serious scholars to take books lacking through analysis, data, and logical arguments at face value. It is entirely reasonable for individuals to question such writing.

I wasn't really suggesting that you take his or anyone else's writing at face value. Simply that I think a lot of what he writes is interesting and makes you consider thinking in different ways. It's rare that any piece of writing, even one published in a scientific journal, will be 100% convincing. You're almost always going to need to do more research and make a decision for yourself.

This is really a rather tame rebuttal. Wired and New Yorker are both famous for their popular takes on history and tech and from what I can, having actually not read the Gladwell piece, the complaints seem about on par with what one would expect.

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