  A large literature has grown up around the proposed use of 'weak
measurements' (i.e., unsharp measurements followed by post-selection) to
allegedly provide information about hidden ontological features of quantum
systems. This paper attempts to clarify the fact that 'weak measurements'
involve strong (projective) measurements on one (pointer) member of an
entangled system. The only thing 'weak' about such measurements is that the
correlation established via the entanglement does not correspond to eigenstates
of the 'weakly measured observable' for the remaining component system(s)
subject to the weak measurement. All observed statistics are straightforwardly
and easily predicted by standard quantum mechanics. Specifically, it is noted
that measurement of the pointer steers the remaining degree(s) of freedom into
new states with new statistical properties-constituting a non-trivial (even if
generally small) disturbance. In addition, standard quantum mechanics readily
allows us to conditionalize on a final state if we choose, so the
'post-selection' that features prominently in time-symmetric formulations is
also equipment from standard quantum theory. Assertions in the literature that
weak measurements leave a system negligibly disturbed, and/or that standard
quantum theory is cumbersome for computing the predicted measurement results,
are therefore unsupportable, and ontological claims based on such assertions
need to be critically reassessed.
