Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell

If the world can be moved by just the slightest push, then the person who knows where and when to push has real power. So who are those people? What are their intentions? What techniques are they using? In the world of law enforcement, the word forensic refers to an investigation of the origins and scope of a criminal act: “reasons, culprits, and consequences.” Revenge of the Tipping Point is an attempt to do a forensic investigation of social epidemics.

That’s the revenge of the Tipping Point: The very same tools we use to build a better world can also be used against us.

Social epidemics are propelled by the efforts of an exceptional few—people who play outsize social roles—and that was exactly how the L.A. outbreak unfolded.

In epidemiology there is a term called the “index case,” which refers to the person who kicks off an epidemic.

An epidemic, by definition, is a contagious phenomenon that does not respect borders.

How your doctor treats you, in many cases, has less to do with where your doctor was trained, or how well he or she did in medical school, or what kind of personality your doctor has, than with where your doctor lives.

Wennberg and other researchers have found that small-area variation does not result from what patients want their doctors to do. It stems from what doctors want to do to their patients.

What he found instead were medical clusters, where the doctors in one hospital district took on a common identity, as if they had all been infected by the same contagious idea.