Word: flimsiest
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From the international point of view, perhaps the chief fact about the invasion is that, far from strengthening Soviet-style Communism, Moscow has further crippled it. Acting on the flimsiest and most cynical of pretexts, Warsaw Pact troops throttled the infant independence of a state that had reiterated its fidelity to Moscow and Communism. To retain its grip on Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union had sacrificed much of its influence among Communist parties elsewhere. Not since the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 had the Kremlin acted so palpably from fear and weakness...
Hersh's account of Kennedy's policies in Vietnam is perhaps the flimsiest part of this book. Much of what he says is well known: that Kennedy was deeply complicit in the 1963 coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem. But Hersh insists that Kennedy not only approved the coup but also knew about and at least acquiesced in plans to murder Diem and his brother. His evidence for this is almost nonexistent: a cryptic, secondhand account of a conversation between Kennedy and CIA agent Edward Lansdale, a vague thirdhand account of a secret visit to Diem...
DHEA, by comparison, is the modern equivalent of a patent medicine--an interesting compound being sold as a cure-all on the basis of the flimsiest scientific evidence. Like human-growth hormone and melatonin, two other drugs being promoted as antiaging compounds, DHEA is a medically active chemical with real value that has piqued the interest of mainstream scientists. But the claims that surround DHEA--that it can restore sexual vigor, prevent cancer and heart disease, and add decades to your life--run far ahead of the science...
...life to studying this naturally occurring substance produced by the pineal gland. He feels certain that it functions as the body's own safe and highly effective sleeping potion. But lately Turek can't shake the feeling that the world has gone melatonin mad. Based on the flimsiest scientific evidence, the subject of his research is now being trumpeted in books and magazines and on television as a cure for everything from autism to aging to schizophrenia to a humdrum sex life...
...that race, German Jacqueline Boerner edged teammate Niemann for the gold, completing a comeback almost as dramatic as Ye's. While training on her bike outside Berlin in August 1990, Boerner was struck -- deliberately, she claims -- by a driver behind the wheel of a Trabant, the flimsiest vehicle on four wheels. "If it had been a real car, I wouldn't be here," she can now joke. But even Trabants are tougher than bikes, and Boerner broke an ankle and tore ligaments in her knee, which sent her to a hospital for months...