---
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
tags:
  - Person
  - Stargate
summary: "Margaret Mead was a renowned American cultural anthropologist."
born: 1901-12-16
died: 1978-11-15
location: "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania"
---


Margaret Mead was a renowned American cultural anthropologist. [[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that in 1969 she delivered a rousing conference speech that contributed to the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]]'s decision to admit the [[Parapsychological Association]] to its ranks of approved disciplines. Her support helped lend a degree of legitimacy to the field of parapsychology, which had long struggled for scientific acceptance.[^1]

The AAAS Council met on December 30, 1969, in the ballroom of the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Boston, with [[Bentley Glass]], the AAAS president for 1969, in the chair.[^2] The Board of Directors had approved the Parapsychological Association's application. [[E. Douglas Dean]], a former president of the association who had pressed the application since 1967, wrote that Mead spoke after Glass asked for further comments. In his report she said that for the previous ten years the Council had been discussing what science and scientific method are and which societies make use of them, and had changed its rules as a result; that the association used statistical methods, blinding, placebos, double-blind procedures and other standard methods; and that the history of scientific progress was full of scientists who investigated phenomena the scientific establishment held not to exist. She proposed that the Council vote in favor of the society's work.[^3] Glass called a show of hands, which Dean estimated at 160 to 180 in favor and 30 to 35 opposed, and declared the motion carried.[^3] Science reported that the Council voted to grant affiliation to the American Orthopsychiatric Association and to the Parapsychological Association.[^2]

[[John Archibald Wheeler]], who had voted against the admission as a member of the AAAS Board of Directors, wrote to the AAAS in 1979: "I know that the views of our late and beloved Margaret Mead were strong in getting parapsychology admitted to the AAAS. I was present at the meeting where it happened."[^4] [[Martin Gardner]] wrote in the [[New York Review of Books]] that the decision was made "at the insistence of Margaret Mead."[^5]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Dael Wolfle, "AAAS Council Meeting, 1969," Science 167, no. 3921 (February 20, 1970), pp. 1151-1153. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.167.3921.1151
[^3]: E. Douglas Dean, "Die Parapsychological Association, affiliiertes Mitglied der American Association for the Advancement of Science," Zeitschrift für Anomalistik 15 (2015), pp. 47-54, account of the December 1969 Council session; an English typescript is in the STARGATE collection, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400040024-0. https://www.anomalistik.de/images/pdf/zfa/zfa2015_12_047_dean.pdf
[^4]: John Archibald Wheeler, letter to William D. Carey, "'A Decade of Permissiveness'," New York Review of Books, May 17, 1979. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/05/17/a-decade-of-permissiveness/
[^5]: Martin Gardner, "Quantum Theory and Quack Theory," New York Review of Books, May 17, 1979. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/05/17/quantum-theory-and-quack-theory/