[hingisundhorsa]

"there's money in writing books to take down Gladwell.". It is interesting that much of the negativity seems to be about the person, Malcolm Gladwell (masked by talking about "Gladwellism" or his style), rather than attacking the points he has made. I wonder if the criticism was genuine, wouldn't it be more focused on the writings and not the writer?

[GVIrish]

Well I think when someone willfully writes books with scientific distortions and spin, that person is deserving of criticism. If you had a coworker who clearly knows better who purposefully writes bad code for job security, you wouldn't just criticize the code, you'd criticize the person. It would be different if they just didn't know how to do things correctly.

The reason I floated the idea of writing Gladwell refuting books is that there's a lot more notoriety to be gained when going after someone who is popular. And it would be somewhat poetic (albeit a bit cynical) to profit by calling out a guy who is distorting science for personal profit.

Maybe someone could name this book, "Glad to be Wrong" or "The Glad Well of Pseudoscience". To be fair, it's not like his books are totally wrongheaded, but they're enough so that people who know better should speak up.