The Myths of the Social Sciences
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The Myths of the Social Sciences

Several years ago one of my former roommates at Harvard, now an economist with the United Nations, dropped by for a visit. We drifted into an informal review of the social science courses we had taken at Harvard in the late 1950’s. The one overriding memory that we both had of those courses was that...

Credulous Creatures
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Credulous Creatures

“If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.” —Robert Burton Who now reads Alfred Kinsey? Almost no one. Who now remembers the great media event set off in 1948 by the publication of his “monumental” book of 804 pages on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male? Most Americans over 40 probably do, while...

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Bureaucratized Education

American education is today so bureaucratized that every increase in tax monies poured into the system produces less real learning. We now spend approximately 33 percent more in real terms ($5,638) per capita on students in elementary and secondary schools than we did ten years ago, but all valid measures show a decrease in learning...

The (Politically) Supreme Court
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The (Politically) Supreme Court

The great sound and fury over the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court included many grand proclamations from all sides concerning the original intentions of the constitutionalists and the relevance of those intentions to our society today. It is clear to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the great issues involved...