Deception-based knowledge in Indigenous and scientific societies

The emerging movement to decolonize the sciences, social and humanities has emphasized differences between Indigenous Western scientific ways of knowing. Paradoxically, emphasizing difference these systems also been principle undergirding modern science’s claim being a uniquely valid means knowledge creation. Yet as each approach focused solely on contrasting knowing, potential similarities may have ignored. One such oversight is use deception by system, which central experimental research designs in psychological American Indian trickster stories. In narratives recounted throughout societies, tricksters act from malevolence, greed, or generosity are often catalysts production. Similarly, it “experimental process” found that deceives subjects order elicit insights into causality, results, become preeminent empirical method twentieth twenty-first centuries.