Word: insists
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Norris and Ross McWhirter acknowledge no limits to their distrust. In 22 years compiling 13 editions of the Guinness Book of World Records--which they insist is "not like Ripley's Believe it or Not"--they have learned that no unauthenticated claim can be accepted, that "the strictures which apply to giants apply equally to dwarfs, except that exaggeration gives way to understatement." The strictures even apply to the McWhirter family. It is not that Ross McWhirter disbelieves his grandfather. He simply wants to state the fact correctly...
...McWhirters insist there is no harm in encouraging people to believe that there are records to be broken. Their book features two separate warnings that trying to break underwater endurance records is extremely dangerous. And their publisher--Guinness's lifeblood notwithstanding--flatly forbids records involving the consumption of more than two liters of liquor (except, apparently, in the case of "a hard drinker" named Vanhorn, who is said to have emptied 35,688 bottles of ruby port before succumbing in 1811) as well as "potentially dangerous categories such as consuming live ants, quantities of chewing gum or marshmallows...
...McWhirters insist that such cautionary tales are all but superfluous. "As a general rule the mind packs up before the body does." Ross explains cheerfully...
...starkly understated discussion of the sizes and careers of various giants, and proceeds through recurring lamentations on the varieties of human duplicity. For example, the McWhirters say. "No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity." But they insist that even such cascades of synonyms are intended to be purely factual...
...Palestinians fear that such a deal would not only separate Egypt from the other Arab confrontation powers but also dilute the credibility and momentum that the P.L.O. gained last year from the Arab summit at Rabat and Arafat's appearance at the United Nations. Israeli officials, at least, insist that Arafat's position is declining significantly on the West Bank because Palestinians are beginning to question his power. For the West Bankers, a plausible alternative to Arafat is Jordan's King Hussein, with whom both the Israelis and Kissinger would prefer to deal...