Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA15260 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 16 Jul 2000 15:49:06 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20000716080355.01fa0820@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 09:44:17 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: RE: Memes and sexuality In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.0.20000714161056.021f1ca0@popmail.mcs.net> References: <000001bfedb7$f067dd40$13281e8c@ultracom.net> <4.3.1.0.20000714113715.01eea1e0@popmail.mcs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 04:33 PM 7/14/00 -0500, Aaron Lynch wrote:
>At 01:21 PM 7/14/00 -0400, Joseph 1 wrote:
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>Hash: SHA1
>>
>>Aaron Lynch wrote on Friday, July 14, 2000 12:59 PM:
>>
>> > At 02:12 PM 7/14/00 +0100, Vincent Campbell wrote:
>> > >Isn't that one of the famous cases where the natives were
>> > playing tricks on
>> > >the investigators?
>> >
>> > Vincent,
>> >
>> > Do you have a reference, or can you recall any general information
>> > about your source?
>>
>>I think he's referring to Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa",
>>where the natives basically made up everything they told the
>>credulous anthropologist. It only came out years later that the book
>>was basically worthless.
>>
>>Joseph 1
>
>I don't know if Vincent is referring to the allegations of hoaxing lodged
>against Margaret Mead by Derek Freeman. But since Freeman has depicted
>Mead as describing the Samoans as a free love society, it seems possible.
>
>However, the assertion that _Coming of Age in Samoa" was "basically
>worthless" seems to be the result of severe bullying and falsification by
>Derek Freeman. That is, Freeman is apparently the real hoaxer--a wolf in
>sheep's clothing. See "Much Ado About Nothing: The 'Fateful Hoaxing' of
>Margaret Mead" by James Côté, _Skeptical Inquirer_ 22 (6),
>November/December 1998.
<snip>
The article by James Côté points out that Freeman was successful in gulling
many intelligent and famous people into believing his story about Margaret
Mead being fooled by natives making up stories about their sex lives.
The article by Côté is accompanied by another article from Paul Shankman
titled "Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Issue of Evolution." That
article explains how Freeman aggressively distorted and falsified Mead's
position on evolution, and portrayed himself as a scholarly hero who
rescues anthropology and intellectual history from terrible damage
ostensibly done by the "Mead paradigm."
The episode illustrates how susceptible scholars and scientists are to
being fooled by someone who uses the superficial trappings of scholarship
to work up a scathing criticism that is in reality based on falsification
and distortion. When dressed up in the language of scholarly discourse, one
tends to assume that such fulminant criticism must be based upon what was
actually written in the target of the criticism. Besides this, it is simply
more work to go and check everything being attributed to the books,
articles, and letters that are being criticized. If we always had to go and
check everything that a critic claims someone said against what that person
actually said, it would greatly slow down the progress of scientific and
scholarly discourse. Unfortunately, dishonest criticism such as that
produced by Freeman may leave relatively few choices. It demonstrates that
cons and facades are not reliably blocked by the peer review process at
scientific journals, even when the author being criticized and and some of
her works under criticism are widely known. Reviewers themselves are not
always able and willing to devote the time needed to fully and carefully
read all the sources cited in an article under review, and neither are a
journal's editors. Even less oversight exists in non-peer reviewed media
such as the documentary and play based on what Freeman has done. Much as
the term "pseudoscience" has proven useful, I think the term
"pseudoscholarship" can also be usefully applied to cases such as this one.
Pseudoscholarship can exist in both the humanities and the sciences.
Even though it has been exposed as dishonest criticism, I suspect that the
Freeman material will continue to hold influence in many circles. Part of
this is due to an effect recognized by Mark Twain in a quote that reads
something like "A lie will go half way around the world by the time the
truth gets its boots on." (Perhaps Wade has the exact quote at hand?)
The Freeman material serves the interests of hard-line evolutionary
psychologists who want to portray other lines of social science,
particularly those that focus on cultural forces, as rejecting evolution.
(Such schools of thought also resort to genetic hypotheses as the
explanations of first resort for phenomena previously considered
"cultural," often leaving little room for the sort of cultural evolution
paradigms that interest many of us here.) One of Freeman's pieces was,
incidentally, published in SKEPTIC, a magazine that, IMO, is partial to
evolutionary psychology hypotheses developed and advanced by Michael
Shermer, as well as similar forms of evolutionary psychology.
Furthermore, the Freeman material serves political and social agendas of
those who feel threatened by any notion that adolescent virginity was not
the norm in an "old fashioned" society.
--Aaron Lynch
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