Gladwell’s a lovable rogue who wriggles out of scrutiny in the same way as David McCandless says his beautiful “visualisations” are just art, really, and because art doesn’t have any rules, neither does he… really depsite them dealing with the illustration of complex data. Or something, I forget the details.
I like to cut them some slack as they’re just trying to make a living by selling us silly ideas that we want to believe in. “Gladwell proves that not only do many successful people have dyslexia, but that they have become successful in large part because of having to deal with their difficulty.” Nice! Makes me feel good. It’s probably bullshit, but so what?
