Gladwell on profiling

On the subway yesterday I read a Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker on criminal profiling, "Dangerous Minds: Criminal Profiling Made Easy". Like all Gladwell pieces, you go through a subtle twist of logic that results in a mild surprise as well as knowing head nodding and smirking -- he is able to inform you while letting you feel "in the know". He described some famous profilers whose predictions seemed magically accurate down to details such as the perpetrator will wear a buttoned double-breasted suit when you catch him. You get an inside glimpse into the world of detectives, profilers, and serial murderers. Then he reveals how the profilers are using an array of techniques employed by "psychics" that make it so that whatever they say that doesn't fit is discarded, and what they say that turns out to be true is seen as proof of their powers. I loved the description of these techniques that are such entrenched tricks of the trade that they have their own names, such as: the Rainbow Ruse (where you credit someone with a character trait AND its opposite), the Jacques Statement, the Barnum Statement, the Fuzzy Fact, and many more.