The author references the work of Barbara Frederickson, a psychologist who had a very popular theory on "Positivity Ratios", a theory that was in part justified

The author references the work of Barbara Frederickson, a psychologist who had a very popular theory on "Positivity Ratios", a theory that was in part justified by misuse of differential equations from fluid dynamics, and was thoroughly debunked in "The Complex Dynamics of Wishful Thinking: The Critical Positivity Ratio" [1]. There have been several good summaries of this paper and the work that led up to it over the past few months (my favorite being this [2] one). I'd take this author's view with a grain of salt (or something stronger). [1] http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/complex_dynamics_final_clean.pdf http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/complex_dynamics_final_clea... [2] http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/ http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/