Word: experts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Siegel, a scientific consultant on the nature of drug addiction to two presidential commissions, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the World Health Organization, is not the first expert to conclude that the desire to alter one's state of consciousness is a drive as elemental as hunger, thirst and sex. But he takes the argument a radical step further by proposing that society would be best served if it accepted the inevitability of intoxication and launched an all-out effort to invent less damaging, nonaddictive substitutes for alcohol and the popular illicit drugs...
...mood of the terrorists seemed to be shifting. The spiritual leader of Hizballah, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, modified his tough position by calling on all parties to help end the ordeal of the hostages. Explained Martin Kramer, an expert in Shi'ite affairs at Tel Aviv University: "They want to regain their dignity and pride and then proceed to negotiate...
...spirit of the age in which he lived?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with "David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age in which he lived then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea of what Hume really said, or in fact what he said it in, or in fact if he ever said anything. But by never bothering to define empiricism, he may write indefinitely on the issue, virtually...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...this point our assumption expert proceeds to discuss anything which strikes his fancy at the moment. If he can sneak the first assumption past the grader, then the rest is clear sailing. If he fails, he still gets a fair amount of credit for his irrelevant but fact-filled discussion of scientific progress in the 18th century. And it is amazing what some graders will swallow in the name of intellectual freedom...