Malcolm Gladwell is acting slightly odd as the criticism of his thinking is reaching a “tipping point”, to use the phrase he popularized. He posted a screenshot of the “igon value” section of his Taleb essay from the New Yorker, but the essay on his website still has the error, which is clearly not a casual spelling error as he claimed, but an idea error. If it were a spelling error, he wouldn’t have made it two words.

Even the earliest commenters are confused about what point he is trying to make:

Not sure why my initial post is gone. Also not sure what your point is here. The image you posted is clearly from a computer screen, and all it shows is that the New Yorker finally cleaned up after you. The original article used “Igon”, as does the version of the article hosted on your own website. (Readers can check the cached version of the article, in case Gladwell edits the current version without fessing up.)

Even his advocates know this:

Perhaps the point he is making is that the New Yorker has noted the spelling error caught by Pinker and done due diligence in fixing it — like any good paper or magazine should.

Yet, it really looks like the point he is trying to make is that he never made the mistake to begin with(?) He admitted that he did a couple posts earlier. Is it somehow profound that the New Yorker eventually fixed his error?

The Atlantic Wire has a good roundup of several negative Gladwell reviews, and claims that it’s because the reviewers are jealous without addressing or even mentioning their specific claims directly. Are object-level discussions out of style these days?

The Columbia Journalism Review makes excuses that he is a feature writer, not a brain scientist. Actually, according to Wikipedia, he’s a “pop psychologist”, and is extremely influential. Many people, including powerful businessmen who could benefit the world more if their views were scientific, take his ideas as well-supported. A commenter at the CJR says:

“Being popular” correlates with being influential. That Malcolm is a tireless and influential proponent of wrong ideas is a problem. There are two potential solutions for that problem: either Malcolm becomes less influential or less wrong. I would prefer the latter solution, but Malcolm seems hellbent on the former.

Is that so complicated?

The notion that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it discourages the use of interventions to prevent cognitive deficiencies. For instance, the effort to put iodine in water and iron in bread in Africa, like it is throughout the developed world, is being slowed due to political correctness around the issue of intelligence and IQ. To imply that they need chemicals to make themselves smarter is to imply that they’re stupid, and we don’t want that. People in Africa and many other developing areas could benefit greatly if more powerful men and women realized that lower national IQ actually means something and that strategies to ameliorate it are worthwhile.

There is endless chatter on this available via Google News, if you want to jump into the debate in other venues. For a classic article by our friend John Horgan on Gladwell, see here.