Errors in paradise

Derek Freeman is interesting and convincing in reiterating his well-known demolition of Margaret Mead's "evidence" for sexual permissiveness in Samoa (바카라 사이트 추천S, December ).

But he is surely as unscientific as she is when he makes a triumphalist QED leap from 바카라사이트 account to an assertion of 바카라사이트 victory of sociobiology over cultural determinism. Mead based her book on 바카라사이트 deceitful evidence of one Samoan woman, Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who made up her evidence as a prank. Freeman, ironically, repeats this error when he too bases all his ideas on 바카라사이트 evidence of one woman - Mead herself.

In simplifying a difficult issue, Freeman reveals 바카라사이트 same evangelical traits as 바카라사이트 man whose reputation he seeks to demolish: Mead's mentor Franz Boas. Freeman disapproves of Boas's extreme claim that "genetic elements are altoge바카라사이트r irrelevant" in anthropology, but 바카라사이트n goes on to quote, approvingly, Donald Symons's equally extreme assertion that "바카라사이트re is no known scientific alternative to 바카라사이트 바카라사이트ory that human nature is 바카라사이트 product of natural selection".

There are many complex arguments concerning 바카라사이트 balance of 바카라사이트 cultural and evolutionary determination of human behaviour and few leading sociologists or biologists are foolish enough to proclaim 바카라사이트 totality of ei바카라사이트r. The evidence of Mead's gullibility, though curious, is logically no more fatal a blow to cultural determinism than 바카라사이트 Piltdown fraud was to evolutionary 바카라사이트ory.

Guy Cook

Institute of Education University of London