Darkness in El Dorado

Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon is a 2000 work of polemical investigative journalism by American author Patrick Tierney. The book accuses American geneticist James V. Neel and American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon of unethical conduct during their research with the Yanomamö people of the Amazon Basin. Tierney also accuses anthropologists Jacques Lizot and Kenneth Good of sexually exploiting Yanomamö people. The book incited a storm of controversy and investigations by several independent bodies. The most extensive investigation, by the American Anthropological Association, found that several of Tierney’s most incendiary claims against Chagnon were false, undocumented, or exaggerated. However, the AAA found that several of Tierney’s claims were substantially correct, and they identified other instances of misconduct by Chagnon.

Tierney sets the scene for his story by describing a filmed encounter between Chagnon and a Yanomamö village: “Despite their previous acquaintance, the Dorita-Teri were not enthusiastic about seeing Chagnon and Brewer again. The village headman, Harokoiwa, greeted them with an ax. Swaying from side to side, Harokoiwa upbraided the scientists for driving away game with their helicopter. He also accused them of bringing xawara—evil vapors that, in the Yanomami conception of disease, cause epidemics. Harokoiwa angrily claimed that Chagnon had killed countless Yanomami with his cameras.”

Tierney goes on to set out Chagnon’s highly decorated career. An anthropologist at the University of Michigan, Chagnon spent five years in the field with the Yanomamö, an isolated Amazonian people, and built his career on books and articles about their culture. His major work, The Fierce People, argued that the Yanomamö worldview revolves around war, which is understood as a means for male Yanomamö to prove themselves worthy of a female partner. The book became a standard text in anthropology and helped to spread the idea that human culture is fundamentally violent and patriarchal.



Tierney collates the work of other anthropologists and his own researches to argue that Chagnon’s depiction of Yanomamö culture is false. The Yanomamö, Tierney argues, are no more warlike than any other pre-industrialized culture. Tierney suggests that much of Chagnon’s data is false or willfully misinterpreted. More seriously, he alleges that Chagnon—either deliberately or without regard to the consequences—stoked violence amongst the Yanomamö by unevenly distributing valuable tools. Tierney also suggests that Chagnon collected blood and other biological data without informed consent, or with false promises of medical benefit. He further alleges that Chagnon failed to protect the Yanomamö when the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments used his characterization of their culture to justify the seizure of their territory. Chagnon may even have encouraged these seizures in the hope of carving out a private research area.

Tierney expands his focus to detail a longer history of abuse and exploitation by Western researchers. He suggests that French anthropologist Jacques Lizot offered shotguns to Yanomamö boys in return for sex (violating anthropological ethics twice over, as homosexual sex is not customary amongst the Yanomamö), and that American researcher Kenneth Good married a Yanomamö girl while she was still a child: she was fifteen when their marriage was consummated. Tierney reports that an unscrupulous gold mining company teamed up with the mistress of the Venezuelan president to create a private state in Yanomamö territory, where they could rule and extract valuable resources. Tierney argues that both Lizot and the Venezuelan geneticist Marcel Roche were involved in administering radioactive materials to Yanomamö, without obtaining consent, on behalf of the French and U.S. government’s nuclear research organizations.

The book’s most serious charge, and the one that proved most controversial, is that geneticist James V. Neel deliberately—or at best through astonishing and unprofessional carelessness—administered an inappropriate measles vaccine, sparking a fatal epidemic. Relatedly, Tierney argues that Chagnon blatantly disregarded quarantine precautions designed to mitigate the epidemic, helicoptering into remote regions to continue his work and perhaps causing the epidemic to spread. Tierney also finds that Neel and his team decided to continue with data collection rather than use their medical expertise to help the dying Yanomamö.



Tierney argues that Neel, like Chagnon, was driven by an obsessive desire to found his reactionary views on scientific research. Tierney suggests that Neel was trying to find a gene for male authority or social leadership: he argues that the measles epidemic provided a suspiciously convenient way for Neel to assemble the data he wanted.

The controversy surrounding Tierney’s book is still ongoing, with prominent anthropologists and other scientists weighing in on both sides of the debate. Chagnon’s reputation was severely damaged by the book’s revelations. However, many of Tierney’s most serious allegations were subsequently found to be unfounded. Most importantly, independent investigators discovered that the measles epidemic that Tierney accused Neel of starting was already underway when Neel arrived. On the other hand, the AAA found that Chagnon did routinely violate quarantine precautions. The AAA also endorsed several of Tierney’s other allegations, including that Chagnon failed to speak out against political misuse of his work, that he failed to obtained informed consent for the taking of biological samples, and that he collaborated with corrupt politicians and unscrupulous business owners to exploit Yanomamö territory.