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Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney: A case of highly selective investigative jour... - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0499.htm anthropology research Questions
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney is filled with a series of accusations ranging from misconduct, unprofessional conduct, to downright illegal and immoral acts
  • book is also impressively documented
  • However, when specific sources relied upon by Tierney are compared with the way Tierney uses them, a very different pattern emerges: one of highly selective use of sources in ways that support Tierney's main arguments and the omission of much more substantive materials which contradict him.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tierney's use of the Jungleman and Valera life histories to support his thesis and then totally ignoring in these same sources major eyewitness and participant accounts of women capture, rape and the murder of children is not an example of investigative journalism that we can trust
  • Although his documentation with footnotes and citation of sources would seem impressive, it does not hold up to straightforward tests of what the sources really say and what Tierney reports them to say. These distortions give testament to a lack of journalistic responsibility and ethics.
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    This article is another example of the Tierney's questionable claims of Chagnon's motives and use of sources.  It describes two examples in particular where Tierney only points out the parts of the stories that support his argument, completely disregarding the context of each source.
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Kenan Malik's review of 'Darkness in El Dorado' by Patrick Tierney - 0 views

www.kenanmalik.com/...tierney_darkness.html research anthropology paradigm
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • In the twentieth century, the consequences of racial science led anthropologists to reject naturalistic explanations and to see human behaviour as dictated largely by culture, not biology
  • all too often anthropologists saw what they wanted to
  • The most prominent of the new generation of sociobiological anthropologists was the American Napoleon Chagnon
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Chagnon presented the Yanomamo as a fierce, primitive tribe whose mores opened the window onto our own past ('our contemporary ancestors' as Chagnon has described them).
  • linked Yanomami violence to genetic success
  • Chagnon revealed that men who had killed had more than twice as many wives and three times as many offspring as non-killers. The idea that murderous violence enhanced Yanomami men's reproductive success was manna for sociobiologists.
  • Chagnon's paper is one of the most widely cited scientific studies of all time - and one of the most fiercely criticised.
  • Tierney presents a convincing case that Chagnon has consistently overestimated Yanomami violence, and that he himself was responsible for fomenting much of it
  • Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado
  • Tierney accuses Chagnon, among other things, of scientific fraud, sexual abuse, political corruption and, most sensationally, genocide
  • Chagnon, and his mentor the geneticist James Neel, may have deliberately infected Yanomami with measles, beginning an epidemic that wiped out hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people, as part of a grotesque experiment to test the impact of natural selection on primitive groups.
  • Tierney's book, they claim, is 'a case study of the dangers in science of the uncontrolled ego'.
  • humans are an inherently violent and aggressive species. Chagnon himself has said that violence 'may be the principal driving force behind the evolution of culture'
  • Chagnon had changed the political balance between different Yanomami groups by favouring some over others, and by selectively providing steel goods and weapons to certain groups. Chagnon was apparently given to bursting into villages decorated in war paint and brandishing a shotgun. Yanomami men soon realized that their own displays of aggression would be rewarded with machetes and other highly prized tools.
  • Chagnon was an active participant in the wars. Yanomami men were fighting for access not to women but to Chagnon himself.
  • In 1968 a measles epidemic decimated the Yanomami population. At exactly the same time, Chagnon had embarked on an expedition to the Amazon under the leadership of the geneticist James Neel. During that expedition the two men initiated a programme of inoculation against measles to protect the Yanomamo. According to Tierney, however, it was that very programme of inoculation that caused the epidemic in the first place.
  • Tierney quotes several people who hint darkly that an epidemic might have been exactly what Neel wanted. Moreover, once the epidemic was under way, Neel and Chagnon 'refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami', insisting that 'they were there only to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help.'
  • Neel rejected the medical orthodoxy that the Yanomami were genetically susceptible to measles, believing that the Yanomamis' survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle had given them immune systems more robust than those of us in pampered modern societies have. The epidemic would prove Neel's theories.
  • Tierney produces very little direct evidence to back up his monstrous claims.
  • The consensus is that the measles epidemic began before Chagnon and Neel arrived in Venezuela, and that they initiated their inoculation programme precisely because they were aware of the earlier outbreak
  • used Edmonston B
  • after receiving advice from the Venezuelan government
  • In many ways Darkness in El Dorado raises more questions about Tierney's motives, and those of Chagnon's other critics, than it does about Chagnon's own work.
  • What Tierney is questioning is the very possibility of a scientific anthropology. Anthropologists cannot simply be observers, as traditional scientific objectivity requires, but must actively take sides in any political struggle involving the peoples they are studying. And in such a struggle the norms of scientific objectivity become subordinate to the political aims
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    I find this article interesting because it not only describes Tierney's point of view of Chagnon in 'Darkness in El Dorado' but it questions Tierney's own credibility of accusing Chagnon for such outrageous crimes.  It describes his reasoning behind all his claims but also points out the last of factual evidence he presents with them.
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Darkness in El Dorado - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...tierney-dorado.html darkness paradigm anthropology
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • expedition leaders Napoleon Chagnon and Charles Brewer Carías
  • claimed first contact with 3,500 Yanomami Indians
  • Yanomami villages they say had never been visited before by anyone except other tribal members" set off a frenzy of media competition
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Siapa region alone
  • only ABC's John Quiñones asked
  • the more remote and more isolated a
  • tribal group is, the greater its market value
  • the last intact
  • boriginal grou
    • Mia Gooding
      Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
       
      *aboriginal group*
  • The round house's roofing was whisked up and away, like Dorothy's house in a Kansas tornado, while the Yanomami's possessions—bark hammocks, gourds, woven baskets, and bamboo arrows—splintered and shattered like Tinkertoys. The on-camera journalist, Marta Rodríguez Miranda, said, "They kindly accepted our landing in the middle of the shabono even though their whole roof would collapse with the downblast."
  • " set off a frenzy of media competition
  • "Aren't we doing some harm, spoiling this culture, even by coming here today?"
  • Charles Brewer,
  • Definitely," Brewer answered. "Every time we are making a contact, we are spoiling them."
  • Chagnon and Brewer had visited the Yanomami of Dorita-teri at another location in 1968
  • two award-winning documentaries
  • Yanomama: A Multidisciplinary Study, dramatically illustrated the scientists' altruism in rescuing the Dorita-teri's parent village from a deadly measles epidemic.
  • The second documentary—The Feast—showcased Yanomami ferocity
  • Harokoiwa angrily claimed that Chagnon had killed countless Yanomami with his cameras
  • many of the Yanomami who starred in The Feast died of mysterious illnesses immediately afterward
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    This document illustrates many of the discrepencies between what the visitors and researchers claimed happened in the Yanomami villages while underscoring the actuality of the situation.  Many of these tribes were devastated by the constant media attention they were getting.  Even on the arrival of anyone to their village by helicopter, houses were destroyed, trees were uprooted, and villagers were injured.  The article discusses Chagnons documentaries as well, describing how they were portrayed at the time as award-winning documentaries.  Apparently Chagnons work rescued the Yanomami from the measles epidemic in the first film and 'showcased' their 'ferocity' in the second.  The article then goes on to say how many of the Yanomami featured in his films died shortly after of some unknown illness and describes a scene where upon Chagnons return to the village he was assaulted with axes and was nearly killed.
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