Earlier quoted context omitted.
Top link from googling "gladwell corporate shill" http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unma... Summary: * pushed ritalin for big pharma * defending tobacco corporations on settlements * advocating for financial deregulation * and defending Enron executives Allegedly rewarded $1m/yr for speaking by undisclosed corporations. Significantly more than what he makes as journalist or writer.
This case against Gladwell as a corporate shill is weak. The article cherry-picks a handful of controversial (sometimes wrong, whatever) positions that align with corporate interests. Note that not all of his positions do, the entire thesis of Outliers is offensive to many in the corporate world. There's no evidence of a quid pro quo anywhere.
The real issue here is that people don’t understand how profound the problem of conflicts of interest really is, and how easy it is to buy people. Doctors on Pfizer’s payroll may think they’re not being influenced by the drug maker — “I can still be objective!” they’ll say — but in reality, it’s very hard for us not to be swayed by money. Even minor amounts of it. Or gifts. Studies have found that doctors who receive free lunches or samples from pharmaceutical reps end up prescribing more of the company’s drugs afterwards. It’s just a fact of human life: we are compelled to reciprocate favors, and an ingrained inability to disregard what’s in our financial interest. As author Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” http://danariely.com/2012/07/09/disclosure-not-good-enough/
As I understand it, the experimental evidence is clear that measures like self-regulation, intuitive judgement, and disclosure are nowhere near sufficient to prevent the corrupting effects of conflicts of interest. What we need are new, simple rules grounded in the empirical findings. We're a long way from that, and it seems that such rules are likely to seem pretty extreme by today's standards, but as long as the science continues to pile up this way it seems like we will eventually have a shot at cleaning things up.