Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point) Vs. Stephen Levitt & S. Dubner (Freakonomics) (1 Viewer)

I really stumbled across this argument between the two when I was browsing Gladwell's site to read some of his past articles. For those of who who don't know who either of these three fine gentlemen are, Gladwell wrote the book The Tipping Point where he examined how 'social epidemices' begin from small things and how they change so fast (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html) and Levitt & Dubner wrote Freakonomics, which used very alternative methods of economics to examine various issues. Both are cracking reads but thats another thing.

The disagreement betwen the two stems from Gladwells glowing blurb on the front of Freakonomics despite Livitt & Dubner actually ridiculing a theory that Gladwell uses in The Tipping Point (the Broken Window theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) and Gladwell posted this on his blog recently:
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/03/thoughts_on_fre.html

Levitt responded in the Freakonomics blog with this:
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2006/03/09/malcolm-gladwell-on-the-freakonomics-paradox/

and Gladwell has responded again on his blog:
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/03/levitt_and_dubn.html

It can go over your head if you haven't read the books but if you have the posts are fantastic.