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.
从《引爆趋势》(The Tipping Point)到《助推》(Nudge)，流行社会科学的兴起在过去十年已成为出版业值得关注的特点。并不是每个人都觉得这很了不起。我最近采访了一位教育学教授、政策评估专家，她对于政界人士倾向于从含有不准确之处的流行社会科学出版物中援引事实的现象感到悲哀。几小时之后，我采访了一位对一本此类专著激动不已的政界人士。如果我当时有幸介绍这两位认识，那种爆炸场面可是值得一看的。