ABSTRACT
The recent publication of Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon (2000) created a major stir in scholarly circles around the world with reverberations in the press. The book critiques the work of famous US anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and other anthropologists and scientists among the Yanomami in Venezuela and Brazil for the effects of the research on the situation of the Yanomami themselves. The highly polemical book attempts to undermine the credibility of anthropological research primarily in moral terms. The book triggered much heated debate about the ethics of anthropology world-wide (but primarily within the American Anthropological Association – or AAA), with participation by many senior anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz. Much of the response criticised Tierney for his misleading use of sources and tendentious interpretation of data, in particular regarding measles epidemics which he claims were caused by a US genetic research mission under the leadership of the noted geneticist James Neel and in the context of which Chagnon did his PhD research. This provoked rebuttals from the American scientific establishment which stood accused, especially from the Atomic Energy Commission – the predecessor of the US Department of Energy – and the National Academy of Sciences.2 The AAA decided to launch a formal inquiry into Tierney’s allegations.3
