Even before I'd read much of this book I had spoken to two or three others who had read it and their comments were and are interesting. Every conversation about the book contained two parts. The first part was something along the lines of, "Yeah, it's a really interesting book... interesting how he puts pieces together." The second part being close to, "Take his conclusions with a large portion of salt. I don't really agree with everything that he says."
I think it would be best in life if one's actions could be both influential and agreeable. If not both, then a close second-best would probably be interesting if not agreeable.
I wonder how much of 'research' is interesting and agreeable. I say this because one major component of my ability to agree with some conclusion is my ability to verify it.
The research group I'm a part of takes an occasional meeting to present a paper along our line of interest. I feel a bit of distaste towards a handful of these papers because the research that they conduct is not easily verifiable. The information that they use is not widely available. One paper, for instance, examined a proprietary code-base to draw it's conclusions. I would have rather had them reach some conclusion that I could verify - that I could agree with.
It's not too bad to be influential. It's better to be influential and agreeable.