Word: ersatz
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Kempton's laconic and somewhat one-eyed observation focuses on a writing style oriented towards "authenticity." No doubt the journalists of the period and the "documentary movement" as a whole swelled the ranks of ersatz "roughs" in Kempton's recollection. If he ignored its virtues, Kempton still managed to define in shorthand the characteristic shortcoming of an abundant and protean genre. The typical documentary article or book was rich with feeling and immediacy but usually short-changed thought and discounted analysis...
...more of the state's 17 tracks (there are only 23 others in the rest of the U.S.). Despite the dearth of glamour and the shortage of champions that stand out from the pack, huge numbers of gamblers want to wager on the greyhounds that futilely chase an ersatz rabbit around an oval of either five-sixteenths or three-eighths of a mile...
...November 27 issue of The Crimson, under the title "The Ersatz Controversy," Richard Herrnstein has once again repeated the litany of "I.Q.'s substantial heritability" and "estimates of I.Q.'s genetic ingredient" that has become such a part of the popular journalism on this issue. In this particular piece Herrnstein tells us that he knows of "no published technical refutation, nor even of any major criticism, by a quantitative geneticist" of I.Q.'s substantial heritability. Since his argument about genetics and social class is deeply rooted in his repeated assertion that I.Q. is highly heritable (80 per cent...
...unjustified conclusions have been drawn from this perversion by mystification, arbitrary redefinition of terms and misdirection of attention. There has been no refutation in the technical literature because the technical literature is not devoted to correcting the misapplication of science by amateur publicists. What we have is not an "Ersatz Controversy," but a real controversy affecting the lives of millions of people, created by the purveyors of an ersatz science...
...there, then, really a controversy on I.Q.? There is clearly a good deal of agitation, but is there counterevidence instead of emotion, fact instead of fantasy, reasoned dispute instead of vituperation? Not much, it seems. The proper message to extract from the ersatz controversy on I.Q. is that many people are not yet ready or willing to hear the news about human differences, because they fear it will be bad. It is unlikely to be as bad as they fear, but it does challenge common egalitarian visions of the good society. The real news--rather than what you've been...