[Nomentatus]

Academia has put its nose up far in the air, it's become a career-crime to write anything for the public, so it falls to journalists to explain scientific results. Gladwell did a good job, then got manure tossed at him from scientists for daring to speak their results; and laypeople who flatly misunderstood what he said, or never read the articles/books and imagined what he said.

But the root problem is inequality - science has begun to see itself as an immaculate priesthood that mustn't mix with the plebs. Scientists should have been presenting their results to the public, but snobbishness now prevents this.