with the local boys with no bad afterthoughts or unintendedrnpregnancies, generalized her hndings on the basis of these fewrndozen self-reported nymphettes, and concluded that sex and allrnits trappings are merely cultural phenomena, not matters ofrnhuman nature. Roughly 60 years later Derek Freeman publishedrna book on Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making andrnUnmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he reportedrnthat those same girls told him, many years after Mead leftrnSamoa, that they never made love under the palms but werernmerely putting Mead on, because they were embarrassed by thernstrange lady asking all those dirty questions. As Freemanrnpoints out, traditional Samoan culture, especially in matters ofrnreligion and sexual morality, had largely collapsed early in thern19th century, a century before Mead arrived, and had been replacedrnby the Christian sexual morality taught by British andrnother missionaries.rnFreeman’s book led to an explosive controversy in anthropology.rnThough the whole issue is now overwhelmed by academicrncomplexities, I am quite convinced that we shall neverrnknow, even at the commonsense level, let alone at that of systematicrnscience, whether the girls put Mead on or whether theyrnlater lied to cover up their earlier wickedness. It really does notrnmatter, except to Mead’s posthumous reputation as Genius.rnEven at their most cunning, the girls never said anything veryrndifferent from what some local “tarts” or “sluts” might havernsaid in the very heart of Puritan New England if they hadrnbeen guaranteed anonymity. Nuns were sometimes found tornbe less than puritanical in 15th-century Florence, but almostrnnever admitted it. But none of this means that human naturerndoes not exist, that sex is all culturally determined, or that thernSamoan girls were lying or telling the truth. As far as humanrnsexuality was concerned, there was no news in Mead’s findings.rnMead’s methodology was actually quite similar tornHerodotus’ travelogue methods. Herodotus was a cultural deterministrn(opposed by Thucydides’ belief in natural and culturalrninfluences on individual choices) who believed in wild storiesrnof casual sex among the “primal hordes.” The problem wasrnthat Meade presented her findings as Scientific Truth, thernmass media and social scientists taught them as sacrosanct, andrntens of millions of miseducated people believed them.rnHerodotus admitted he did not know if his stories were true byrnnoting that he had only heard these things, hence acknowledgingrnthat they might be mere rumors. Mead’s anthropologicalrnresearch was simply not as good as that of Herodotusrn2,300 years earlier and was nowhere near as good as the methodsrnof Thucydides (who was a complete insider in the war hernstudied). There were other anthropologists in her own dayrnstudying love and sex on nearby islands, such as HortensernPowdermaker and Bronislaw Malinowski, who did much betterrnthan Herodotus. But modernist America loved Mead and forgotrnthe others. (The best anthropologists, a true oasis in an academicrnwasteland, did not forget Malinowski.)rnAlfred Kinsey did basically the same thing as MargaretrnMead, but on a far grander scale and in far more pretentiousrnforms of Absolute Scientific Truth. I doubt that any social scientistrnwho looks at Kinsey’s interviews and questionnaire surveysrnwould now believe that his quantitative conclusions are atrnall justified. I doubt anybody, social scientist or otherwise, whornlooks at some of his reported methods, such as his unquestioningrnacceptance of “anonymous” findings that infants subjectedrnto genital stimulation can have massive orgasms in rapidrnsuccession, would deny the fact that Kinsey also “discovered”rnsome of the most bizarre myths in human history. On thernother hand, anyone with any knowledge about human historyrnor with any experience in a big city will not be at all surprisedrnby Kinsey’s conclusion that the world is full of sexual “outlets”rn—intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, and much else.rnTo this day there is a great controversy raging whether Kinseyrn”discovered” or “proved” that ten percent of the adultrnpopulation is “gay.” Kinsey, among others, was aware of thernfact that very few people who are socially labeled as “homosexual,”rnor who label themselves as “homosexual,” are exclusivelyrnso. For example, it is well known from every conceivablernsource that prisoners, who were highly overrepresented in Kinsey’srnsamples, commonly engage in homosexual acts in prisonrn(willingly or by force), that they do not often see themselves asrnhomosexuals, and that they routinely escape homosexual practicesrnwhen released. These and a great many other complexitiesrnconsidered by Kinsey and almost everyone else who studiesrnsex are completely overlooked in the media.rnBut one can easily show far more horrendous problems—andrnabsurdities—in Kinsey’s data. Kinsey’s reports on sexually potentrninfants are indeed shocking, but not merely because theyrnindicate that someone actually stimulated children to orgasm.rnKinsey’s reports were shocking because they were preposterousrnin every respect, from beginning to end. They read like somernkind of pederastic science fiction, but of the most bizarrernkind. Though pederasty is one of the most secretive forms ofrndeviance in our society, I do not know anyone who admits tornbeing an infant pederast in any circumstances. There arerncriminal convictions for molesting or raping infants, but I dornnot believe that there is a kind of mad-scientist pederast of thernsort reported by Kinsey. It seems far more likely that someone,rnprobably out of Kinsey’s prisoner sample, got a tremendousrn”kick” out of fooling Kinsey and his whole team, just as somernof Mead’s adolescent girls probably got a tremendous “kick”rnout of putting her on about love under the palms.rnAs these examples make clear, the current state of our bigrnuniversities (not our small liberal arts schools) and especially ofrnthe social (pseudo) sciences is that of a wasteland. The era ofrnmodernist scientism is still with us in many of these big bureaucracies.rnJargonism, rationalism, statisticism, sterile typologism,rnand ad hoc conceptualism still run rampant in thernmassive questionnaire surveys of sociology, political (pseudo)rnscience, and family studies. But who now believes those textbookrnquestionnaires measuring comjjatibility in love or employeernmorale in industry? Few intelligent members of thernpublic still believe these myths. Even executives are beginningrnto flee the absurdities of business science and business schoolrncredentialism. The absurdities of the social sciences make itrnclear that these disciplines are already on life-support today.rnAmericans only let them continue because they provide convenientrncredentials for their children.rnBut I have faith that in death will be the rebirth of the socialrnsciences. The interwar Wasteland that T.S. Eliot, OswaldrnSpengler, and so many others described did not lead to the fallrnor death of the Western world. The awful decay of values inrnthose years led to a reinvigorated search for meanings. I believernsomething similar will happen, even in our dead universities, inrnthe decades ahead. The social sciences will be rebuilt—regroundedrn—on the foundations of human nature and wisdom.rnThey will once again become handmaidens of common sensernand ancient values, not tyrants of modernist Science and socialrnplanning. crn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn