![]() Chabris re-treaded that piece for Slate, accusing Gladwell of deliberately misrepresenting the science.Chabris had so much material lined up that he blogged a week later under the heading Why Malcolm Gladwell Matters (And Why That’s Unfortunate).First, there was the review in the Wall Street Journal, in which he argues “Malcolm Gladwell too often presents as proven laws what are just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior”.Psychologist Christopher Chabris seems to have got under Gladwell’s skin with a multi-barrel onslaught on David and Goliath. He’s not renowned for exploring nuance, complexity or even evidence that flat-out contradicts his thesis. To critics, he seems to take a rather one-eyed view of the scientific evidence: happy to garnish his writing with citations of research that suits his argument. ![]() Those critics - many of them scientists, lesser-known authors, and commonly both - consider Gladwell’s too willing to compromise about the “non” in non-fiction. But that awesome strength in narrative story-telling and character-driven non-fiction turns out, in the eyes of many critics, to be Gladwell’s weakness, too. ![]()
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