I had my own hypothesis of a Gladwell recipe: he takes a well-executed research paper, and expands on the references, and their references, and then adds links

I had my own hypothesis of a Gladwell recipe: he takes a well-executed research paper, and expands on the references, and their references, and then adds links to other pop-science books. The original idea could be told more precisely within 15 pages, as exemplified by the journal article, and his 300 page books give little glimpses of that clarity when they are verbatim from the original, and mud the water elsewhere.