Flavor of the month : why smart people fall for fads

While fads such as hula hoops or streaking are usually dismissed as silly enthusiasms, trends in institutions such as education, business, medicine, science, and criminal justice are often taken seriously, even though their popularity and usefulness is sometimes short-lived. Institutional fads such as open classrooms, quality circles, and multiple personality disorder are constantly making the rounds, promising astonishing new developments—novel ways of teaching reading or arithmetic, better methods of managing businesses, or improved treatments for disease. Some of these trends prove to be lasting innovations, but others—after absorbing extraordinary amounts of time and money—are abandoned and forgotten, soon to be replaced by other new schemes. In this pithy, intriguing, and often humorous book, Joel Best—author of the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics —explores the range of institutional fads, analyzes the features of our culture that foster them, and identifies the major stages of the fad cycle—emerging, surging, and purging. Deconstructing the ways that this system plays into our notions of reinvention, progress, and perfectibility, Flavors of the Month examines the causes and consequences of fads and suggests ways of fad-proofing our institutions. While fads such as hula hoops or streaking are usually dismissed as silly enthusiasms, trends in institutions such as education, business, medicine, science, and criminal justice are often taken seriously, even though their popularity and usefulness is sometimes short-lived. Institutional fads such as open classrooms, quality circles, and multiple personality disorder are constantly making the rounds, promising astonishing new developmentsnovel ways of teaching reading or arithmetic, better methods of managing businesses, or improved treatments for disease. Some of these trends prove to be lasting innovations, but othersafter absorbing extraordinary amounts of time and moneyare abandoned and forgotten, soon to be replaced by other new schemes. In this pithy, intriguing, and often humorous book, Joel Bestauthor of the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics explores the range of institutional fads, analyzes the features of our culture that foster them, and identifies the major stages of the fad cycleemerging, surging, and purging. Deconstructing the ways that this system plays into our notions of reinvention, progress, and perfectibility, Flavors of the Month examines the causes and consequences of fads and suggests ways of fad-proofing our institutions. Joel Best explores the range of institutional fads, analyses the features of our culture that foster them, and identifies the major stages of the fad cycle: emerging, surging, and purging. He examines the causes and consequences of fads and suggests ways of fad-proofing our institutions Annotation Using vivid, illuminating and eye-opening examples, Best uncovers the dynamics of fads. From hula hoops to low carbohydrate diets, the author shows us how fads have become an integral part of our cultural life The illusion of diffusion Why we embrace novelties : conditions that foster institutional fads The fad cycle : emerging The fad cycle : surging The fad cycle : purging Fad dynamics Becoming fad-proof.