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Apr 03, 2025
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Fall 2025 Undergraduate Catalog
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ANT 406 - Pseudoscience and Anthropology
Course will examine some common misconceptions, as well as deliberate frauds, related to the field of Anthropology. Bigfoot, Atlantis, and ancient astronauts remain common subjects in mainstream media, but what do we, and what can we, really know about such subjects? In this course we will assemble a basic toolkit for skeptical inquiry, and apply it to several examples of anthropological pseudoscience. Dissecting these cases leads to an investigation of how we can distinguish truth from falsehood, and knowable facts from unknowable conjectures. Lastly, we will try to understand the persistence of pseudoscience and other forms of nonsense in our culture, as these clearly thrive despite their lack of grounding in reality.
3 credits
Prerequisite(s): ANT 104 , ANT 120 (formerly offered as ANP 120), and either ANT 201 (formerly offered as ANP 201) or ANT 220 (formerly offered as ANP 220)
Offered: Formerly offered as ANP 406. Not for credit in addition to ANP 406.
DEC: H
SBC: STAS
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