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)，流行社會科學的興起在過去十年已成爲出版業值得關注的特點。並不是每個人都覺得這很了不起。我最近採訪了一位教育學教授、政策評估專家，她對於政界人士傾向於從含有不準確之處的流行社會科學出版物中援引事實的現象感到悲哀。幾小時之後，我採訪了一位對一本此類專著激動不已的政界人士。如果我當時有幸介紹這兩位認識，那種爆炸場面可是值得一看的。