Perhaps the sad fact is that being entertaining and being accurate are conflicting goals. Who wants to listen to a complex explanation for why the "fifteen minutes of videotaped conversation" method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman )for predicting the likelihood of divorce is flawed due to overfitting issues (see http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010... for details)

Gladwell doesn't let complex facts get in the way of a good story.

And to be frank, most research isn't "good research" either. With that said, much of what he's doing is constructing a framework and then building into it. This is actually similar to what is done in a lot of social science research. And Gladwell, often does it much better, even from a purely academic perspective.

The main issue is that millions of people read and scrutinize Gladwell. No one reads "A Critique of 12th Century Eastern European Poetry and the Relationship to Subsurface Climate Volatility".

It's not meant to be research. If it were, wouldn't it be published in an academic journal?