What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures (2009) is Malcolm Gladwell’s fourth book, comprised of 19 essays that he wrote for The New Yorker at the turn of the 21st century. The book is thematically eclectic but also builds upon interests explored in his former books, including the power of small things, decision-making, and success stories. Since the book’s publication, Gladwell’s reputation has grown: He is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, and the host of the podcast Revisionist History.

Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker’s review of What the Dog Saw is mixed. He praises Gladwell’s curiosity, his “nose for the untold backstory,” and his “transparent” prose, concluding that “readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist” (Steve Pinker, “Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective.” The New York Times, 7 Nov. 2009). However, he disputes that Gladwell has the expertise to discuss some of the topics he addresses and asserts that “his lack of technical grounding” shows up in glaring factual errors and unsatisfying conclusions (Pinker). Pinker points out one of these errors, which appears in the 2002 essay “Blowing Up,” in which Gladwell misquotes an expert’s citation of eigenvalue—a simple algebraic concept—as “igon value” (71). Pinker coined a whole new journalistic concept from Gladwell’s error, “the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong” (Pinker). Since it was coined, the Igon Value Problem has been used to critique the insufficient depth of much modern journalism, which mentions topics that the writer themselves has little understanding of.

This guide uses the Penguin Reissue Edition from October 2009.

Summary

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures begins with a preface from Gladwell explaining that his ideas come from a curiosity about how other people’s minds work, in addition to a hunger for stories about often overlooked heroes, who are not the obvious stars that obsess the media. The title of the book, for example, derives from an essay exploring the canine perspective on human behavior.

The first group of essays looks at minor geniuses who have revolutionized aspects of day-to-day existence. These include Ron Popeil, pioneer of newfangled kitchen gadgets, Shirley Polykoff, the woman who made hair dye respectable, and dog-whisperer Cesar Millan.

Next, Gladwell examines the reasoning flaws in the predictions, diagnoses, and interpretations of disasters. In a study of the collapse of the energy company Enron, he begins by addressing the fallacy of the modern assumption that lack of data and company transparency was at the root of the problems. Instead, here—as with other disasters, such as the Challenger shuttle explosion—it is not a lack of volume of data that is the problem but faulty interpretations. He also critiques the increasing tendency to value intellectual property and finds fault with the modern notion that a charge of plagiarism should ruin reputations and lives. Instead, critics should look at why the person plagiarized and whether their act adds value to society.

The final part of the essay collection picks up Gladwell’s favored topic of personality and his longstanding investigation of why some people succeed while others who seem equally promising fail. He explores the problems with society’s generalizations about genius, namely that it will be apparent early on in life or predictable by standard assessment tests. In essays on employment selection, he proposes assessing candidates based on current job performance instead of predicting their potential performance based on the prerequisites they’ve achieved. He also looks at the factors that can bias judgment in areas as diverse as candidate selection and serial-killer identification. Finally, he returns to a study of canines to look at the fallacy behind labeling pit bulls the most dangerous breed of dog, when the evidence suggests that the most aggressive dog attacks have less to do with breed and more to do with “a perfect storm of bad human-canine interactions” (408). In this group of essays, Gladwell’s message is that readers need to question what they think they know.