“Anthropologists have long debated whether their field is or ought to be a science or one of the humanities; some are fond of pronouncing that it must become history or nothing or that biology and psychology have no explanatory power in the study of cultural man. These exchanges, as regular as the seasons, can be entertaining or infuriating, depending on one’s tastes, but they do little to advance knowledge. What is needed, I believe, are fewer manifestos about the paradigmatic status of the discipline and better questions for scholars to pursue in whatever fashion they believe will lead to falsifiable answers. I am proposing several questions. First, can we identify valid criteria for determining whether one sociocultural system is more adaptive—or less harmful to its members—than another? Second, do maladaptive or useless beliefs or practices occur even in societies that have survived in the same ecosystem for many years? Finally, if maladaptive beliefs and practices can be identified, why do they occur?”