Forget Gladwell

W. David Marx -

Society should withhold all esteem and attention to a nonfiction author whose entire oeuvre spitballs explanatory social theory under the bad faith idea that he holds his ideas “loosely” and readers should too

The Washington Post: Malcolm Gladwell's new book rehashes "The Tipping Point"

I wrote a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering for The Washington Post. I concurred with critics at The New York Times and The Atlantic that it's not a very good book.

But Revenge is not an isolated blunder. This is the eighth of his eight problematic books, as illustrated by critics' truly damning reviews:

All nonfiction writers can end up writing incorrect or controversial things, but why does every Gladwell book push half-formed and inaccurate theories? For years, my loose feeling about Gladwell was that he writes like someone who doesn’t care about being correct, which is not a way I would describe any other author I've encountered. There is something uniquely odd about his work.

Picking on Gladwell, however, is a bit of a cliché, and I am often advised to keep quiet for a wide range of professional reasons. But he's unstoppable and incorrigible, and I don't believe he's harmless. As The New York Times notes, “Business mavens, political leaders and ordinary strivers in both those fields treated [The Tipping Point] like a Bible, mining it for insights on how to make their own products and pitches spread.”

I've read The Tipping Point three times. It's a fun book. But since its publication, almost all of his ideas have faced serious critique. (e.g. Fast Company: "Is the Tipping Point Toast?") The title "Revenge of the Tipping Point" sounded like Gladwell would finally defend the original book. He even sounded open to the idea in The Guardian: “Maybe it would be a good idea for anyone who writes a book that tries to make sense of the world to be forced every 25 years to go back and revisit the original thesis.” But in Revenge, Gladwell does no such thing. The book never references any of the myriad disagreements with his ideas, nor references any rival ideas at all.

I find that very suspicious, and in reading Revenge, I also was reminded that his big underlying thesis — “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do” — is inaccurate and misleading. If people only take away the concept of "social epidemics" from reading either book, they've taken away a bad idea.

The problem is that every Gladwell book falls into this pattern: A weak thesis with obvious flaws treated like the sole way to view the world. But wouldn't he be right at least sometimes? His track record for constant error is a real mystery.

Let's first dismiss the canard that any criticism of Gladwell stems from jealousy of his popularity, or that he's forced to "dumb down" his writing to be popular. His ability to write for a broad audience is the best thing about him. But many authors succeeded as accessible writers without pushing bad ideas. Carl Sagan didn't need to re-invent the theories of astronomy to write Cosmos.

So after thinking about Gladwell for months, I finally cracked why his books read as they do: His entire writing process is in bad faith. This becomes very clear in listening to him when on the defensive. Nonfiction writers all face criticisms, and the normal human response is to stand by one's own words, perhaps with some clarification or counter-argument. (And when wrong, to admit it.) When Gladwell faces critique, he immediately leans into a laundry list of excuses for why he can't possibly be expected to get it right.

This begins with “I’m just a journalist,” which is odd because good journalists do ample research for their stories, build a persuasive case through facts, and interact with counterpoints in order to dismiss them. When his journalist excuse wears thin, Gladwell says that his books are a “gateway drug” for more difficult ideas, which would make sense if his schtick was simply summarizing the core scholarship of a field. Instead he invents amateur social theories and neologisms that distort the original sources.

And sometimes he just lies. In that recent New York Times interview, he's asked about why he proposes “Laws” to explain society, and he pushes back, “It’s for fun. I mean, I don’t call it a capital-L law.” But he absolutely does propose capital-L laws! In the Tipping Point, there was “The Law of the Few,” and now in Revenge, he added the “Law of the Magic Third.”

Then, finally, in that very same Times interview, Gladwell provides the Rosetta Stone for understanding him: “I hold ideas very loosely, and I think it’s important for people who write about ideas to remind their readers to hold their ideas loosely.” Gladwell writes like someone who doesn't care about being correct because he doesn't care about being correct! His spitballs are truly spitballs, and he doesn't care where they land. This explains why he doesn’t spend any time bolstering or battle-testing his theories, because it's like souping up the engine of a rental car you're about to drive off a cliff.

Gladwell's bar for whether an idea is worth writing up in a mass market book is literally "I dunno, maybe this is something?" This then limits how much deep thinking he can do, because his spitball-theories will no doubt fall apart with any additional self-scrutiny. If he actually thought about his "social epidemic" idea for more than a few seconds and read widely on the topic, he'd also conclude that it's a terrible metaphor for social change, and that would be the end of The Tipping Point. So he runs his nonfiction career in the Theranos model: We’ve come this far convincing people of our genius, so no time for doubt! Just run with it!

Oh, but Gladwell has even more excuses. Gladwell told The Guardian recently, “My books are not for everyone. You have to be interested in this kind of ride.” Artists typically say, "my work is not for everyone,” to signal work that is difficult, experimental, or very specific — like David Lynch films, or hell, even Rob Schneider movies. This is an odd thing for Gladwell to say about himself, because the basic defense has always been, Sure, his books aren't correct or profound, but they're very accessible. Gladwell seems to misunderstand why critics dislike him: It's not because he weaves together various case studies. (That's actually the best part!) It's because the central binding idea is weak or wrong, and he doesn't seem to care.

To his credit, Gladwell is very consistent: He doesn't seem to think deeply about much of anything. He hung a portrait of Mao Zedong — the architect behind the Great Leap Forward — on his wall because it's "funny.” And when asked what it’s like to be a rock-star journalist, he answers, “It means less than I would have thought.” This is very obtuse answer for a man whose most famous topics are why things get big and what it means to be an expert. Gladwell may be attempting some odd humblebrag that he's just some Canadian rando with loosely held ideas who happens to write books that aren't supposed to be taken seriously, and look, now he can't even remember if his first advance was one million American dollars, maybe it was something in that range. Does he not realize he's so famous that the AP wrote a news story a few months ago simply announcing his new book?

This brings us to why Gladwell isn't just irritating but corrosive. He is a distortion on the production of knowledge in society. He abuses his fame. No young writer could get away with writing books anchored in "loosely held ideas." And in this, he violates the basic social contract between author and reader. The majority of Gladwell's audience reads his books on the fair assumption that he must be writing with expertise and conviction on his topics, or otherwise, publishers and booksellers wouldn't be such strong advocates. But even though Gladwell is fully aware that he's not being rigorous, he never caveats his ideas as mere speculation. No Gladwell book tells you in the preface: Hey, hold these ideas loosely. He wants it both ways: to come across as authoritative to readers and be able to distance himself from mistakes later.

But more oddly: Why would he dedicate his life to being an "explainer" without caring if his own explanations are actually true? Since he feels zero compunction about mis-educating his readers, it's clear there's only one motivation for why he writes: to continue his lucrative career being a "famous writer."

Taken all together, Gladwell operates in such bad faith that it justifies removing his past, present, and future body of work from the public discourse. He has pulled all of his famous hypotheses – social trends as epidemics, instant judgments equal in value to deliberative ones, 10,000 hours to be an expert, etc. — from the same poison well of "loosely held ideas." He's now told us exactly who he is, so it's up to us to forget him.