Ho-hum, nothing revolutionary. Similar to
Millionaire Next Door.
But this type of thing is really junk science. They survey millionaires. Fine. They come up with a list of common attributes. Fine. But they do not survey non-millionaires, so they have no idea whether some or all of the attributes are also present in the non-millionaire population. Said another way, they have no way to know whether any of these attributes actually distinguishes millionaires from people with less money.
Nassim Taleb, in
The Black Swan, describes this issue as the fallacy of "silent evidence." It's an important takeaway from the book. Taleb uses a story from Cicero to highlight the fallacy.
Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning. Diagoras asked,“How many of those who drowned were believers? Did you interview them as well?”
When it came out,
Millionaire Next Door was heavily criticized for having this same problem.
In Search of Excellence was another book with the problem. Both books were, of course, huge best sellers. Junk science is popular stuff.
