"However, every time I read his work, I wish that experts of the fields he reports on would also write popular expositions that could be consumed by an audience

"However, every time I read his work, I wish that experts of the fields he reports on would also write popular expositions that could be consumed by an audience like that of the New Yorker." I wish that were true too. I am trying in my own blog to present my work in both a form accessible to the literate public and helpful for researchers (though I have neither published most of my work yet, nor attracted an audience the size of the New Yorker so you will just have to be patient!) Arguably, Flynn did his best with "What is intelligence?" but people probably ran for the hills at the first formula. Such is life. But there are at least a few scientists who write for the public audience, Dawkins, Dyson, Hawking and Pinker perhaps most relevantly today, that do attract a wide readership. I honestly think Gladwell does a better job presenting things straight than Hawking. The rice field argument, while apparently silly, doesn't strike me as particularly wrong. I'm merely unconvinced. Does Gladwell in this book, more than his others, draw theories from selected scattered 'outliers,' more often than reasonable? I do not know how far he goes.