Question: I have nothing against nonscientists. People who study music, Old English, or Freud are valuable. But as a scientist, I'm bothered by those who are actively anti-scientific. "Leary," a psychologist on my campus, advocates aromatherapy, crystal healing, and curing cancer by driving out "unreasonable fears" and "obsessive thoughts." While I agree that certain aromatherapies work, and that positive thoughts may help cancer patients, I think claiming that someone can bring a disease on himself without effects from any carcinogen is illogical, poor clinical practice, and downright mean.

"Leary" has won our college's major teaching award and has enough committee work and publication to be tenurable. The vote is this fall. I don't believe that someone who spreads pseudoscientific and nonsensical ideas should be teaching at a university.

Answer: Are you, perhaps, asking Ms. Mentor whether someone should be fired for teaching things that are not true?

Indeed, worse than that has happened to controversial teachers and mentors. Socrates was forced to take poison; Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno, and Joan of Arc were burned at the stake. Pierre Abelard had such a torrid romance with his pupil, Heloise, that her relatives castrated him. Ms. Mentor shudders.

Nowadays, however, there are more open procedures. It can generally be assumed that if Leary meets your university's criteria -- teaching, research, and service -- Leary will get tenure. Ms. Mentor adds that if Leary is teaching a healthy skepticism about received ideas, then aromatherapy, crystal healing, and mind-body connections might fit into the realm of psychology. Acupuncture, after all, used to be considered flaky, and there are certainly enough doubters today about psychoanalysis.

Moreover, Ms. Mentor notes, there is no law that academics must promulgate "the truth" (in literary criticism, such a notion is considered laughable). New doctors take the Hippocratic oath, and postal carriers have a traditional mantra ("neither snow, nor rain"). But academics take no oath of office, sign no pledge of allegiance, and learn no secret handshakes. Few even know the American Association of University Professors' Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure: "The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition," and "Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject."

Young academics' apprenticeship in pursuing and promoting the truth is often haphazard. In their first time on the job, they're apt to be trailing after The Great Man (who may be a woman) -- grading his papers or mollifying students who wouldn't dare confront The Great Man. Graduate teaching assistants -- academic novices-- prepare chemicals, find citations, record data, and lead discussions attempting to parse what The Great Man meant. Sometimes they ascend from the bullpen of T.A.-ship to their very own class, but they're equally likely to begin a first "real" job with someone else's syllabus. It is possible to be teaching for five years or more before you really create your own course and can invoke academic freedom to pursue what you believe students need to know.

And here Ms. Mentor returns to what she, in her infinite wisdom, perceives as your real question: Should someone who teaches things that are wrong get tenure?

Ms. Mentor knows well that young students can be swayed by wrong ideas if they are promoted by charismatic and irresponsible adults. Students do give higher evaluations to male professors who are authoritative, and female professors who are nurturing, and all teachers who are lively and funny. What if a very entertaining history professor, call him Schickelgruber, began teaching, with an air of authority, that the Holocaust never took place? In France, Holocaust denial is considered a crime, but not in the United States. Suppose students loved Professor Schickelgruber's classes, flocked to them, nominated him for teaching awards? Suppose his numerous, impeccably researched publications were on other historical subjects and won national awards? Suppose he is a hard-working, conscientious colleague who also does volunteer work for the homeless?

Professor Schickelgruber has met all the legal and official criteria for tenure -- including "collegiality," if that is also a criterion in his college's handbook. But ... he teaches his belief that the Holocaust is a myth dreamed up by Zionists. He also tells his students that the last Jew who should have been believed was Jesus.

Are there open, above-board ways to deny him tenure? Probably not. Concerned colleagues may visit his classes, and write negative peer-observation reports. Outside referees may be urged to write damning reports on his publications. His fellow teachers may decide to claim that his committee work is inadequate. Colleagues may simply lie and say that he is "uncollegial" and that they hate him. Truly malevolent people could claim, or even set up, Professor Schickelgruber so that he appears to be committing sexual harassment or collecting child pornography.

But Ms. Mentor remains deeply troubled, for she can find no honest, procedural way to deny a colleague tenure for teaching malicious, repellent, and actively evil lies. She is glad that your letter is only about aromatherapy, crystals, and nontraditional medicine.

Question: I'm meeting with my department chair in about five minutes, and I'm afraid I'm going to cry. Besides years of extensive psychotherapy and assertiveness training, plus kicks and kisses from kith and kin, what do you recommend to control those telltale watery eyes and sniffly nose?

Answer: Antihistamines.

SAGE READERS:: "They are soulless maniacs!" declares a recent correspondent to Ms. Mentor. Those drivers yakking away on their cell phones are "the most degenerate kind of terror-producing humans on earth," and the writer proposes turning all four-year liberal-arts schools into driver-education academies, to reach minds "sucked dry by the cheap and vulgar lure of gratuitous consumption culture."

A more temperate August correspondent, "Algernon," thanks Ms. Mentor for advising him a year ago to stop fuming about his low salary. He has since quit that job and is now a happy adjunct, delighted to "show my wife that her career is just as important as mine."

Other correspondents to Ms. Mentor would be happier, she believes, if they did their own research, instead of expecting her to do it for them. You know who you are. As always, Ms. Mentor invites questions and fulminations for this column and a second volume of her impeccable advice. She continues to collect anecdotes about age discrimination and coming out in academia (when should you do it?), and thanks those who have already contributed. She rarely answers letters personally, and anonymity is guaranteed. Gossip -- one of the consolations nature provides us in this vale of tears -- is always welcome.