Yes, I agree. A writer *should* get the details right. Nobody’s perfect, but all he had to do in this case was do some very basic fact-checking. It reads like he had a vague memory of some stuff that he half-learned once and he just wrote it down anyhow.

1. Malcolm Gladwell is the worst.

2. Yes! I have that same dilemma! And also because if I’m unfamiliar with the topic, I sometimes am not ready for a researcher’s take on it. I need something slightly more introductory that isn’t assuming any knowledge on my part. It’s a dilemma. I have yet to resolve it.

3. You are awesome. Please write an entire post. I love all your red flags. I agree with you like crazy. When a nonfiction book doesn’t have a bibliography I just can’t even. Unless it’s, like, collected essays in which case FINE (but I’d still rather have a bibliography and a bunch of notes).

Oh what a shame! I think it makes a big difference to me when an author bothers to do proper research into a side issue. That shows that they aren’t JUST interested in the main topic of their book, but that it’s important to them to get all the things right. You know?

Ah.

Internal hyperlinking is easy! And it works on any blogging platform because it’s HTML. I lurve internal links. 😀

Make sure you’re in the HTML editing window, not the visual one. Where you want the link to end up, type [a name=”X”] text [/a] (replace the [ ] with and X with whatever you want; text is wherever you want the link to end up, it could also be an image). Then, to make the link, type [a href=”#X”] link [/a] (replace [ ] with and X with whatever you used earlier, don’t forget the # sign!).

I suspect my explanation makes it sound more complicated than it is. So here’s an example from my review directory page, in which I have internal links to the different letters:

At the top of the page, where I have links to all the letters:
[a href=”#A”]A[/a]
At the ‘A’ section, where I want link to end up:
[a name=”A”][/a]

I only used [ ] instead of so you could see the code instead of it getting converted in the comment box. 😉

2) “I get that Hvistendahl isn’t a researcher; she’s a journalist. She cites like a journalist and not like a researcher. But still I was left with a lingering, pervasive feeling of unease.” –> I have such an instinctive preference for researcher-style nonfiction. Even knowing the flaws/biases of academia, I find it so much more solid and convincing than journalist stuff. I want peer reviewed nonfiction! But then, I also want perspectives from outside The Establishment. It’s tricky.

3) Has this happened to you before? What red flags make you think a nonfiction author may not be trustable? Do the red flags differ if you’re reading a book by a journalist versus a researcher?

Red flags for me include: direct dialogue w/o any explanation for how the author recorded/remembers it, nonfiction written with other fiction conventions, like present tense, a person’s inner dialogue, etc. (I’m in the middle of the Warmth of Other Suns right now and have to keep reminding myself the point is that it’s an oral history project and thus should be seen as more third person memoir than nonfiction), massive generalisations that just happen to match current widespread stereotypes, a subtitle with the word ‘rogue’ in it (do not get me started on the nonsense that is Freakonomics), lack of any end notes, bibliography, etc., when I keep checking the citations and they’re all from the same two or three sources, authors who keep committing logical fallacies (I was a debater in high school, so we had to memorise all of them & list/detect examples; it’s engrained in me now), and academics who clearly subscribe to the dominant paradigm (see: neoliberal economics) and never address that, just taking it for granted that it’s right.

Um, that’s a short list and already this comment is out of control! I think I might have to write a blog post in response.

This sort of thing makes me quote Kermit the Frog: “You know, it’s amazing. You are 100% wrong. I mean, nothing you’ve said has been right.”

This post is why I don’t read as much nonfiction as I’d like. :p

Oh yes. Hvistendahl does talk about that. But she also says that this phenomenon is largely taking place amongst middle-class, less conservative families where the women do have a higher level of control of their own lives. She doesn’t suggest this is because lower-class families wouldn’t select for boys, it’s just because the middle- and upper-class families are the ones that have easy access to that technology right now.