The anecdotes here could be used to justify a range of different theories:
'Being Daring is the Secret Ingredient for Success';
'Innovation is the Secret Ingredient for Success';
'Not Giving Up is the Secret Ingredient for Success'
'Giving People What They Don't Know They Want is the Secret Ingredient for Success'
and so on... Can I have my book deal now?
EDIT: I'd also like to use this opportunity to invent the new verb "to Gladwell", which is to make up a spurious set of keys to success using the flimsiest of anecdotes. Hence my next book - 'Learning How to Gladwell is the Secret Ingredient for Success'
"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly.
The problem with Gladwell is that many or most of the anecdotes he uses have been used by others to draw different conclusions (how many times have you read about the Tenerife disaster for example?)
I don't think Gladwell pretends to be doing science, but what he does is worse than "non-science", it's a kind of charlatanism. He builds a thesis and then hand-picks anecdotes to fit his preconceived narrative.
That's how chain-letters are made. (And his talent as a writer makes it worse.)
"The successful people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to fairly merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and the methods by which they endeavored to acheive them."
100% of successful people subjected themselves to merciless self-examination? A 100% result usually indicates a small sample size or a meaningless conclusion. Nor is this a particularly useful fact without knowing what % of unsuccessful people self-examine themselves constantly.
It's hard to knock the article's premise though, even if the author has provided little evidence to support it: Frequent self-examination seems like a good thing.
I believe that honest and accurate self-examination is easier said than done, though.
'Being Daring is the Secret Ingredient for Success'; 'Innovation is the Secret Ingredient for Success'; 'Not Giving Up is the Secret Ingredient for Success' 'Giving People What They Don't Know They Want is the Secret Ingredient for Success'
and so on... Can I have my book deal now?
EDIT: I'd also like to use this opportunity to invent the new verb "to Gladwell", which is to make up a spurious set of keys to success using the flimsiest of anecdotes. Hence my next book - 'Learning How to Gladwell is the Secret Ingredient for Success'