Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, 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.
I think Gladwell is often wrong. But he is usually correct in presenting the views of experts. Rather, Gladwell is subject to attack because he is the next Steven Jay Gould. He accurately popularizes the views of experts who emphasize chance, contingency, and sweeping structural factors in explaining poverty and success. Thus Gladwell popularizes Claude Steel, whose work on stereotype vulnerability holds that internalized racism is the real reason why black students do worse in school. Gladwell popularizes Judith Rich Harris who argues that parents do not play much of a role in preparing their children for success in life. Instead seemingly arbitrary factors like which social niches are available at school make the determination.
Steven Pinker is best known for his book The Blank Slate, which takes nearly the opposite position. Pinker points out that traits like IQ are heritable and important to success in life, that there are differences between men and women, and that there is a dark side to human nature. Males compete for sexual dominance and access to females, war is a natural part of the human condition even among primitive tribes, and so on.
I think Pinker is just about right, but the only reason why Gladwell has the gig as “Steven Jay Gould: The Sequel” is because academia has not weeded out the ideas of people like Claude Steele. But that is not Gladwell’s fault.
0 comments:
Post a Comment