Easterly fails to find the tipping point

Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point was a big hit, but I didn't like it - it seemed too much pop pseudoscience and not enough rigor. Seeing tipping points in hindsight is fun but not much use if the book offers nothing of predictive value.

Turns out Bill Easterly looked for the tipping point in racially segregated U.S. neighborhoods (one classic example) and didn't find it. Doesn't completely disprove the notion, of course, but it does nothing to dispel the impression of the sort of post-hoc narrative construction that Nicholas Naseem Taleb so enjoys demolishing.