From The Tipping Point to Nudge, the rise of pop-social science has been a noticeable feature of the past decade in publishing. Not everyone is impressed. I recently interviewed a professor of education who is an expert in policy evaluation. She lamented the fact that politicians tend to get their facts from popular social science books containing innacuracies. A couple of hours later, I interviewed a politician who was fizzing with excitement about a popular social science book. If only I'd been able to introduce them, the explosion would have been something to see.
從《引爆趨勢》(The Tipping Point)到《助推》(Nudge)，流行社會科學(xué)的興起在過去十年已成為出版業(yè)值得關(guān)注的特點(diǎn)。并不是每個人都覺得這很了不起。我最近采訪了一位教育學(xué)教授、政策評估專家，她對于政界人士傾向于從含有不準(zhǔn)確之處的流行社會科學(xué)出版物中援引事實(shí)的現(xiàn)象感到悲哀。幾小時之后，我采訪了一位對一本此類專著激動不已的政界人士。如果我當(dāng)時有幸介紹這兩位認(rèn)識，那種爆炸場面可是值得一看的。