From your initial reference, A Socratic Dialog... We show how students can be led... a teaching tool!
Have you actually read the NIMA document you referenced? Yes they use the term, but they also continually reference it as, "closely associated with". Even then it is closely associated with the mean sea leavel..., not as an accurate description of the physical composition or shape, of the earth.
Table 5.2 teaches the people who can read physics (certainly, not you) that the standard deviation is of the order of $$10^{-5}mgal=10^{-8}gal$$. This is in perfect agreement with the AmJPhys paper. You and arfa brane should write to the people at NIST, they are doing everything wrong (according to you two).