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I wish someone would similarly test Malcolm Gladwell's body of work. It's encouraging to see the scientific method re-injected into the popular press.

by bake 10y ago

verganileonardo 10y ago
Yes, please! He is famous for creating theories based on one or two very specific stories. Even when he is based on real academic studies, they are usually featuref by small and biased samples (e.g., 40 harvard students). Would love to see the same for Blue Ocean Strategy!
projektir 10y ago
The Sports Gene book spends some time on it, on the 10,000 rule in particular.
riazrizvi 10y ago
Gladwell's works Blink and Outliers both paraphrase important scientific works, in the simplified style the references are largely glossed over. In place of Blink, read Antonio Damasio's Descartes Error, the seminal book on emotional reasoning. Instead of Outliers read Anders Ericsson's The Road To Excellence. Both of these more formal books cite sources meticulously.
barry-cotter 10y ago
Malcolm Gladwell does not have a body of work. He is scientifically ignorant to such an extent that he had articles with "igon values". I'm unfamiliar with the literature, real scientific literature Blink was based on. 10,000 Hours or whatever it's actually called is based on the study of expertise in psychology. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance covers it in depth. K. Anders Ericsson founded the field.
akhilcacharya 10y ago
I really wish his take on college admissions wasn't shared around this time every year...
Fede_V 10y ago
Gladwell is a wonderfully gifted writer who has a fantastic talent for weaving engaging narratives. Unfortunately, when it comes to science, this is NOT a good thing. Scientific discoveries don't follow narratives: narratives are things we impose post-facto to make it easier to tell an engaging story. For example, the 10,000 hour rule makes for a nice story about effort, and Gladwell brings up a lot of examples: of course, if you look at the meta analysis, it turns out that it's completely wrong: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not-real-180952410/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not... The problem with having a nice narrative is that it's too tempting to fit facts into your story for the sake of having a clean, linear narrative. If you were to write an honest book about the latest findings in social psychology, it would spend several chapters discussing statistical power and meta analysis, it would be incredibly cautious, and it would be full of results which are contradictory. The only thing worse than social psychology in this regard is business school books. The numbers are even smaller, the tendency to pursue narratives even bigger, and the professors get paid a lot more.
- riazrizvi 10y ago
  10,000 hour rule 'completely' wrong? Not even according to the quoted article which says the number is somewhat arbitrary, though deliberate practice correlates with expertise.
- markdown 10y ago
  > Unfortunately, when it comes to science, this is NOT a good thing. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is an awesome book.

I wish someone would similarly test Malcolm Gladwell's body of work. It's encouraging to see the scientific method re-injected into the popular press.

by bake 10y ago

I wish someone would similarly test Malcolm Gladwell's body of work. It's encouraging to see the scientific method re-injected into the popular press.

verganileonardo 10y ago

Yes, please! He is famous for creating theories based on one or two very specific stories. Even when he is based on real academic studies, they are usually featuref by small and biased samples (e.g., 40 harvard students). Would love to see the same for Blue Ocean Strategy!

projektir 10y ago

The Sports Gene book spends some time on it, on the 10,000 rule in particular.

riazrizvi 10y ago

Gladwell's works Blink and Outliers both paraphrase important scientific works, in the simplified style the references are largely glossed over. In place of Blink, read Antonio Damasio's Descartes Error, the seminal book on emotional reasoning. Instead of Outliers read Anders Ericsson's The Road To Excellence. Both of these more formal books cite sources meticulously.

barry-cotter 10y ago

Malcolm Gladwell does not have a body of work. He is scientifically ignorant to such an extent that he had articles with "igon values". I'm unfamiliar with the literature, real scientific literature Blink was based on. 10,000 Hours or whatever it's actually called is based on the study of expertise in psychology. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance covers it in depth. K. Anders Ericsson founded the field.

akhilcacharya 10y ago

I really wish his take on college admissions wasn't shared around this time every year...

Fede_V 10y ago

Gladwell is a wonderfully gifted writer who has a fantastic talent for weaving engaging narratives. Unfortunately, when it comes to science, this is NOT a good thing. Scientific discoveries don't follow narratives: narratives are things we impose post-facto to make it easier to tell an engaging story. For example, the 10,000 hour rule makes for a nice story about effort, and Gladwell brings up a lot of examples: of course, if you look at the meta analysis, it turns out that it's completely wrong: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not-real-180952410/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not... The problem with having a nice narrative is that it's too tempting to fit facts into your story for the sake of having a clean, linear narrative. If you were to write an honest book about the latest findings in social psychology, it would spend several chapters discussing statistical power and meta analysis, it would be incredibly cautious, and it would be full of results which are contradictory. The only thing worse than social psychology in this regard is business school books. The numbers are even smaller, the tendency to pursue narratives even bigger, and the professors get paid a lot more.

riazrizvi 10y ago
10,000 hour rule 'completely' wrong? Not even according to the quoted article which says the number is somewhat arbitrary, though deliberate practice correlates with expertise.
markdown 10y ago
> Unfortunately, when it comes to science, this is NOT a good thing. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is an awesome book.