You don't get to claim an unproven alternate science just because it's a good story unless you're in the Fiction aisle. Gladwell would like to be in the non-fic

You don't get to claim an unproven alternate science just because it's a good story unless you're in the Fiction aisle. Gladwell would like to be in the non-fiction aisle, and he really utterly fails there. He's "not lying" only in the sense that he spouts completely uninformed opinion. He knows that he does that, because it's not like he hasn't been told repeatedly. He continues anyways. At that point, the line to flim-flam becomes tenuously thin.