Margaret Mead in Samoa

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I found Martin Orans's review ( Science 's Compass, 12 Mar., p. [1649][1]) of my book The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research (Westview, Boulder, CO, 1998) partisan in the extreme. In her letter of 15 February 1926 to her supervisor, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead stated that for the first time in her brief stay in Manu'a she planned to conduct, during April 1926, a “special investigation” of the sexual behavior of her sample of adolescent girls. ![Figure][2] Margaret Mead (center) and friends in Manu'a, American Samoa, in 1926CREDIT: MARGARET MEAD PAPERS, MANUSCRIPT DIVISION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; COURTESY OF THE INSTITUTE FOR INTERCULTURAL STUDIES, NEW YORK On 19 March 1926, after having told Boas that her “problem” was “practically completed,” Mead wrote to Boas announcing that she had decided to cut short her fieldwork by more than a month. She then left Manu'a for the south of France without carrying out, during April 1926, her planned “special investigation” of the sexual behavior of her adolescent girls. These historical facts seem inconsistent with the view that Mead engaged in deliberate falsification. If she had indeed been involved in deliberate falsification, she would never have made her Samoan papers available for public scrutiny in the Library of Congress. In marked contrast, the historical facts confirm the sworn testimony of Mead's traveling companion Fa'apua'a Fa'amu that on 13 March 1926, on the island of Ofu, Mead was hoaxed by Fa'apua'a and her friend Fofoa about the sexual mores of the Samoans. Of this Mead appears to have been totally oblivious, as is anyone who has been successfully hoaxed. Thus, Orans's statement that I claim that Mead committed “a crime of misrepresentation” is incorrect. That Mead was hoaxed makes fully credible her revealing letter to Boas of 14 March 1926, as well as her words, “I am leaving here with a very clear conscience,” uttered before she sailed from Manu'a on 16 April 1926. A Boasian ideologue she may have been; a deliberate cheat about major anthropological issues she was not. The detailed evidence for this (based on primary sources) is contained in my book The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, and I invite readers to consider for themselves the historical evidence contained in that book and come to their own conclusions. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.283.5408.1649b [2]: pending:yes