Anti-Fragile is a popular work on risk; the description is simply accurate, and distinguishes the works she had read from Taleb’s academic work.
Most academics who also write popular works aren't prickly about describing their popular works as such; I don't think Hawking would get upset at someone describing A Brief History of Time as pop cosmology.
The piece seemed like it was intended to explain the historical consensus on ethnic diversity in Roman Britain and how that consensus was achieved, which one can't really do reasonably in 140 characters. She mentions the Twitter drama for context, but I think she's trying to keep the debate focused on the point of factual contention rather than personal conflict.
If people want to get anything productive at all out of these constant Twitter flareups they need to allow for de-escalation.
"I think Prof Taleb did get annoyed when I said that I had read his ‘pop risk’ book, not the others. But I was actually trying to make clear that I had some knowledge of his work, though not a lot."
She not only mentioned that in the article, it's the truth? And how is that a slight? It's bloody amazing that you can write books on risk that reach mass audiences. It's only a slight to Taleb because he prefers to think of himself as above the fray.
Also, even if you disregard the "pop risk books" qualification, her argument comes down to "what did you publish on Roman Britain", instead of engaging with Taleb's argument.
Taleb is disregarding the entire field of history because it is 'Anecdotal' as opposed to 'Statistical'. Since there are no 'statistics' from the period he is acting like he knows as much as one of top living scholars on Roman history. The written and archaeological record shows that auxiliaries were often stationed far from their home territories, but I guess that was all part of a 2000 year plot to make Britons accept immigrants.
No, all he's saying is that you cannot ignore genetics, and that genetics is more reliable than fragmentary historical records. And that those Roman auxiliaries would have been Mediterranean, not sub-Saharen Africans.
Most academics who also write popular works aren't prickly about describing their popular works as such; I don't think Hawking would get upset at someone describing A Brief History of Time as pop cosmology.