Peter Wood, in a review of Paul Shankman's book, The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy:
So which is it? The Mead vs. Freeman controversy doesn’t look like it has much room for an in-between answer. Either Samoan teenagers of that time were free and easy with their sexuality or they were hemmed in by a social system that strongly repressed pre-marital sexual activity.
Anthropology as a science ought to be able to answer such a straightforward question. It says something about anthropology that the issue is still controversial 27 years after Freeman declared that Mead was provably wrong.