Page "Malcolm Gladwell" Paragraph 13

Criticism of Gladwell tends to focus on the fact that he is a journalist and not a scientist, and as a result his work is prone to oversimplification.

The New Republic called the final chapter of Outliers, " impervious to all forms of critical thinking ".

Gladwell has also been criticized for his emphasis on anecdotal evidence over research to support his conclusions.

Maureen Tkacik and Steven Pinker have challenged the integrity of Gladwell's approach.

Even while praising Gladwell's attractive writing style and content, Pinker sums up Gladwell as " a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning ," while accusing him of " cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies " in his book Outliers.

Referencing a Gladwell reporting mistake, Pinker criticizes his lack of expertise: " I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer ’ s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.

" A writer in The Independent accused Gladwell of posing " obvious " insights.

The Register has accused Gladwell of making arguments by weak analogy and commented that Gladwell has an " aversion for fact ", adding that, " Gladwell has made a career out of handing simple, vacuous truths to people and dressing them up with flowery language and an impressionistic take on the scientific method.

" Gladwell's approach has been satirized by the online site " The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator ".