>>> Posting number 1527, dated 30 Dec 1996 23:20:52 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 23:20:52 -0500 Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Al Higgins Organization: Sociology Department UAlbany Subject: On Re-reading Freeman MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On re-reading Freeman: A Review \Freeman, Derek. "Margaret Mead and The Heretic: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth," New York: Penguin, 1996.\ The original book (Margaret Mead and Samoa, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983) came out in paper in the following year (New York: Penguin, 1984) and now has been reissued and the title changed, "Margaret Mead and the Heretic," (New York: Penguin, 1996). There's a new Forward which provides the rationale for the change in title: "My book of 1983 is being republished, under a new title, to coincide with the staging in Australia of David Williamson's play Heretic." (p. vii) The new Forward makes an original assumption of the1983 book very clear: Mead was sent to Samoa with a very specific charge and responsibility: "'the study of heredity and environment in relation to adolescence' in Samoa." (p. x) And Mead was being supported by a National Research Fellowship for the year 1925-26, with Boas as her official supervisor. It was a rush job at best and Mead compounded her difficulties by taking on additional responsibilities for the Bishop Museum (Hawaii). The arrangement make it difficult for Mead in that she had two major research projects to complete within a very limited period of time. So, Mead cut corners and relied on insistent questioning of two adolescent girls informants who, as do Samoans when asked questions they don't wish to answer, they hoaxed, they teased and they misinformed. Mead, in a rush to get these jobs done, did poor field work. Freeman concludes: She (Mead) finally sailed from Manu'a on 16 April 1926, after a stay of just over five months, having spent most of her time during her last weeks on completing her ethnological research for the Bishop Museum. Thus, Mead's "special investigation" of the sexual behavior of the adolescent girls she was supposed to be studying was, in fact, never undertaken at all. Instead, having been comprehensively hoaxed, she relied on what she had been told by Fofoa and Fa'apua'a, and made this the information on which she based her best-selling book Coming of Age in Samoa, which at once became the principal mainstay of Boasian culturalism and, in Mead's own estimation,"a scientific classic." It was in this way then that the ardent young Margaret Mead, in 1926, made her egregious mistake. (p. xii) Freeman makes it clear that Mead did not "lie" in reporting what she was told. She's guilty of poor field work and he points to her error and sets the record straight. To Freeman, Margaret Mead, the historical evidence demonstrates, was comprehensively hoaxed by her Samoan informants, and then, in her turn, by convincing Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict and others of the 'genuineness' of her account of Samoa, she unwittingly misinformed and misled the entire anthropological establishment, as well as the intelligentsia at large including such sharp-minded sceptics as Bertrand Russell and H. L. Menken (sic). That a Polynesian prank should have produced such a spectacular result in centers of higher learning throughout the western world is wonderfully comic. But behind the comedy there is a chastening reality. It is now apparent that for decade after decade in university and college lecture rooms throughout the western world students were misinformed about an issue of fundamental human importance by professors who, placing credence in Mead's conclusion of 1928, had themselves become cognitively deluded. There is much to be learnt then from the history of Margaret Mead's Samoan researches, and especially about what can happen to the highly intelligent, the well-intentioned and the totally sincere in the hazardous course of anthropological fieldwork. (p. xiii) It's quite clear that Freeman's "better methods" will produce other results than those reported by Mead. The remainder of the book is a detailed presentation of the facts of Samoa and, far from being the idyllic South Seas island of sexual pleasure, it is a society which is very much like other human societies with its crime problems and its troubled adolescents. It's very clear: better field work produces data which are in line with this biologist's view of adolescence.. Freeman details some of Mead's omissions and commissions: she never learned the language of the people she was studying. She did not live among the people she was studying for anywhere near the amount of time needed to do the study she had attempted. She focused narrowly on adolescence but failed to contextualize that one aspect of life in terms of the total culture of Samoa. And these are all serious "flaws" to her methods. And most readers would agree that Mead did not do a good job in her work in Samoa. But is that the major point? One might reasonably ask: is flawed fieldwork the methodological context the proper context for examining Mead's work? Or, rather, are there several other contexts in which her book can be seen?. Other contexts seem to me, at this late date in the 20th century, to be more appropriate for seeing the "science" she did. Thus, one could examine Mead's book as well as Freedman's dissection of it, in terms of the ideologies in which the investigation was conducted. Thus, the decade of the 1920s was a time of enormous popularity of the Eugenics Movement and its biologism. The big names in that field were Galton, Pearson, Grant, Stoddard and Davenport and they represented an enormously appealing if simplistic approach to the human condition. The other side was championed by Franz Boas, Mead's academic advisor and mentor. Boas was fighting a battle with the biologists. He was arguing and losing to the popular idea that nature, not nurture, was responsible for the ills of society. Quite simply, Boas wanted data to support his side of the argument and so he sent Margaret Mead, a very young, impressionistic, untrained young women halfway around the world to gather the data he wanted Moreover he did not give her the time nor the money to do the work he wanted done but, nonetheless, she knew from the outset what was expected of her and, by God, she gave it to him. Margaret Mead returned to the States after only a few months in the field and wrote the book Boas wanted. It's this context that seems appropriate. Substantively, the fieldwork is a minor point. Do graduate students routinely provide mentors with ideas and data which support the professors' ideas and data? Graduate students routinely provide their mentors with exactly the stuff they want. Graduate students would be idiots to do otherwise. Consider the power one's mentor has over the career of graduate students: the graduate student is totally dependent on the person chosen as mentor! In the political context of graduate school, any graduate school and any science, one does, in writing a dissertation, exactly what is expected of a graduate student; that is the routine way, and perhaps the only way, of "earning" a degree. One typically "finds" what the mentor is looking for just as, in other contexts, we typically only find what we have been looking for. So Mead's work should be seen as 1) finding what one is looking for and 2) being the result of the ways in which graduate schools prepare students. In both contexts, the flawed fieldwork is to be understood as appropriate to the situation. Mead, probably unconsciously, was going to give Boas her mentor and adored Professor what he wanted and the sloppy way in which she collected data fit nicely into the overall scheme of things: she could and did report to him exactly what he wanted and could even suggest that informants had told her the pap she was giving him. She wasn't lying and, like a good schoolgirl, she would, for her work, get a gold star. For his part, the professor's pet theory was confirmed by the work of a student. Of course that work was "hard." Of course that work was "carefully done." One did not look unkindly at data which supported one's beliefs. Mead was to be given a good grade and hailed as an exemplary student. That is what good students are those who provide positive feedback to professors. And that is built into our system of doing graduate work. One takes sides in ideological disputes in which one's mentor is a Big Name. That goes with the territory. Then, in doing research, one is "guided" by one's mentor's ideas. That is the academic context in which to appreciate Coming of Age in Samoa. A. C. Higgins SS 359 SUNYA Albany, New York 12222 ACH13@CNSVAX.Albany.edu Phone: (518) 442 - 4678; FAX: (518) 442 - 4936 SCIFRAUD@CNSIBM.Albany.edu >>> Posting number 1528, dated 31 Dec 1996 12:18:00 Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 12:18:00 EST Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science From: "Gardenier, John S." Subject: FW: On Re-reading Freeman Very well written, Al. Gives us all a lot to think about. Thanks and Happy New Year. John G. >>> Posting number 1529, dated 1 Jan 1997 10:33:28 Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 10:33:28 -0500 Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science From: "Dewey M. McLean" Subject: Re: On Re-reading Freeman In-Reply-To: <01IDN043AXC29I453L@cnsvax.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Al, your posting on Margaret Mead provides excellent example of how too much science is really done. Thanks. Does anyone have recent information on Kenneth Ryan's efforts to redefine scientific misconduct? Dewey McLean >>> Posting number 1530, dated 1 Jan 1997 15:21:27 Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 15:21:27 EST Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science From: Foster Lindley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I am sure the point Al Higgins makes regarding Mead and Boas is well taken, as well as his discussion of the influence of advisers in general. However, I thi nk it is also true that students frequently "study with" professors whose views they find agreeable, so the discipleship may not be altogether due to the pres sure applied by the professor. Disciplines differ enormously in this respect a lso. Some are so politicised and demand such fierce loyalties from their stude nts that the students have little freedom. Others are not. Foster Lindley >>> Posting number 1531, dated 2 Jan 1997 02:22:20 Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 02:22:20 EST Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science From: Ted Hermary Subject: Re[2]: On Re-reading Freeman In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of Wed, 01 Jan 1997 10:33:28 EST The intellectual/ideological context would seem to be more complex than Al has it (though his points are relevant). I think we'd have to see it in the context of Freud's theories and some anthropologists' (including Mead's) view that there must be some societies which did not make sexuality problematic. Ted Martin (Ted) Hermary (A.B.D.) Department of Sociology McGill University 855 Shebrooke Street West Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 e-mail: czth@REDACTED.mcgill.ca