Outliers | a book review | Joel on Software

So I’m still excited to get Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” (which gets delivered from Amazon today), despite the criticism by Michiko Kakutani, who basically gave the book a terrible review.  I noticed this review on Joel Spolky’s blog: Joel on Software.

Joel uses the summary of Michiko’s review as an introduction to a rant that has some validity.  Joel has noticed lately “an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works.” This is basically how Michiko describes Malcolm Gladwell’s book.

However, Joel goes on to make the claim that this is not the way to move science forward, but I disagree.

Just because I read something doesn’t mean I believe it.  I read because what I’m reading makes me think.  It creates a mental dialog between myself and whatever topic I’m currently reading about.  Whether the information is correct or not makes little difference – I can distinguish between correct and incorrect by doing some research on it, and knowing all the pieces that are incorrect helps me discover the pieces that are correct.  This is a crucial part of the scientific method.

We teach students in school to pay close attention to the validity of people’s sources.  It is second nature to myself and 90% of my peers to question not only the sources of information, but the information itself, whether it comes from some random blog on the internet, or straight from the mouth of a college professor.

All this spreading of misinformation isn’t prohibiting the development of science, it’s helping to move it forward.  The fact that there is dialog at all, whether misinformed or not, is better than having no dialog.