This seems like a fit of jealousy to me. Malcom Gladwell makes no claim that the observations mentioned in his books meet any scientific standards. His points are usually correct (though obvious to many); in this case his point is that adversity often breeds success in ambitious people (e.g. Princeton students, not necessarily random students at a public college). Perhaps he cherry picks examples to prove those points, but having read his books and the recent criticisms of them, I still don't feel that I have been lied to.

Gladwell does what many successful authors in this genre do: he tells us what we already intuitively know in a palatable way that makes the concepts feel new. It makes people feel justified in their belief that they can overcome seemingly daunting challenges when they see it in print by a noted author. His books may not reveal groundbreaking results of scientific studies, but they justify the views of the kinds of people that read his books, and that will tend to make them successful regardless of the scientific accuracy of any examples mentioned in his books.