Word: often
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When a big story breaks, the first thing reporters do is get the news. The next thing, usually, is to round up a few experts to say what it all means. Too often, what gets experts quoted -- and called again the next time news relates to their specialty -- is not specific knowledge of a case but crisp, piquant opinion. The expert enjoys the publicity; the journalist enlivens a story. The losers are the public, who get ill-informed speculation masquerading as analysis, and the news subjects, who are assessed in intimate, knowing terms by strangers...
George Bush has often said he prefers "what works and what's real" to "airy" theorizing. Yet as he prepped for the toughest challenge in his diplomatic career, this weekend's meeting in Malta with Mikhail Gorbachev, there were tantalizing signs that the President was coming down with a case of "the vision thing." As he described his attitude toward the Saltwater Summit last week, "I'm thinking of it rather philosophically...
...fact, Rifkin probably loses in court more often than he wins. Nonetheless, he has forced the Government to establish regulatory pathways for some genetically engineered products and clarify practices for others. In the world of technological regulation, says NIH researcher Anderson with grudging respect, "it takes some sort of catastrophe or threatened catastrophe to get things to happen, and Jeremy is constantly threatening catastrophe...
...they predicted, it proved harmless.) Typically, Rifkin would plunge into a scientific setting, armed with papers from dissident researchers, and warn about the potentially catastrophic consequences of inadequately regulated research. Says geneticist Zinder: "The accusations are made simply, with simple words. But the proof is very sophisticated and often difficult to grasp." Rifkin acknowledges that he occasionally uses scare tactics. But he claims that the scientific establishment is equally guilty, both of excessive rhetoric and of usurping policy decisions that need more debate than they are being given...
Maybe longer. Rifkin, 44, enjoys most the college lectures that often have him flying two to four times a week. One recent swing took the Rifkin show to Alfred University in upstate New York. As usual, he charmed and joked, provoked and pleased. He lectured the freshman class about the need for activism at a time of environmental crisis brought about by misguided values. Afterward, dozens of students remained in the gymnasium to form an environmental action group. Leaving the hall, Rifkin looked back over his shoulder and said to a companion that these were the children of the antiwar...