Gladwell's writing is seductive, providing surprising insight which appears to make complex phenomena understandable and manageable.
Unfortunately, I fact checked him. He's an entertainment writer at best, an intentional distributor of misinformation packaged as research at worst.
Examples:
Blink featured John Gottman's research into relationships. He could predict relationship outcomes with 91% accuracy. Unfortunately he never split out a test dataset and the model was overfit; real world accuracy is no better than existing techniques. This was known at publish time.
Unfortunately, I fact checked him. He's an entertainment writer at best, an intentional distributor of misinformation packaged as research at worst.
Examples:
Blink featured John Gottman's research into relationships. He could predict relationship outcomes with 91% accuracy. Unfortunately he never split out a test dataset and the model was overfit; real world accuracy is no better than existing techniques. This was known at publish time.
Tipping Point drove companies to seek out Mavens and Connectors, only to find that they don't really exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point#Scientific
For an actual evidence-based review of many Malcolm concepts, I recommend "Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer".