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"You can't make this stuff up," people often say when they read astonishing claims about a major scholar's supposed transgressions. But it turns out you can -- so long as you convincingly pose as a great scholar yourself.

Witness a new analysis from Paul Shankman in this month's Current Anthropology of the controversy over Margaret Mead's Samoan fieldwork. Shankman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, has for several years been doggedly investigating the smearing of Margaret Mead by the anthropologist Derek Freeman.