Viewpoint: Yes, Margaret Mead's methodology was flawed, and her bias and naiveté call into question her conclusions.

Viewpoint: No, while Mead's methodology and conclusions have been legitimately criticized, her overall analysis has been supported by a majority of anthropologists.

When the American anthropologist Margaret Mead died in 1978, she was the only anthropologist so well known to the general public that she could be called "grandmother to the world." Indeed, it was through Mead's work that many people learned about anthropology and its vision of human nature. Through her popular writings she became a treasured American icon, but by the end of the twentieth century her reputation was under attack by critics who challenged the...