If Gladwell Published in Nature or some other primary journal, I could understand the hate, but he publishes in The New Yorker and writes popular books. There is a place for people who expose ideas to broader audiences, and in fact it is important for catching the interest of people who might one day go deeper and challenge some of the ideas.
I would liken him to my exposure to Martin Gardner and AK Dewdney in the back pages of Scientific American as a kid. They weren't setting out to use their platform to do basic research in math and computer science, or to write definitive texts, but instead were popularizing interesting and though-provoking ideas in these area in a manner that was challenging yet accessible to a broader audience.
I know that I definitely would have been far less likely to pursue a career in science and technology had it not been for those who popularized the biz, like those two, Hofstadter, Tracy Kidder, et al.
As for people blinding taking what they consume as gospel, that seems to be a fairly universal human characteristic, whether the source is a cable news outlet, a religion, etc. It is a high bar to set to require all written communication to be immune to misinterpretation or over generalization, and the burden rests more on the audience.
"Fairly characterize the evidence for your position" shouldn't apply only in Nature.
If Gladwell came up with an hypothesis and gave anecdotes both supporting and disproving his hypothesis, that would be "exposing ideas." Instead, he (sometimes implicitly, but usually explicitly) suggests that his hypothesis is a universal law.
Of course, Gladwell writes well. But the OP is exactly right that Gladwell's bread-and-butter is inappropriate extrapolation from a few anecdotes to some pithy "theory of everything."
I would liken him to my exposure to Martin Gardner and AK Dewdney in the back pages of Scientific American as a kid. They weren't setting out to use their platform to do basic research in math and computer science, or to write definitive texts, but instead were popularizing interesting and though-provoking ideas in these area in a manner that was challenging yet accessible to a broader audience.
I know that I definitely would have been far less likely to pursue a career in science and technology had it not been for those who popularized the biz, like those two, Hofstadter, Tracy Kidder, et al.
As for people blinding taking what they consume as gospel, that seems to be a fairly universal human characteristic, whether the source is a cable news outlet, a religion, etc. It is a high bar to set to require all written communication to be immune to misinterpretation or over generalization, and the burden rests more on the audience.