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Erin Meachem

JSTOR: Current Anthropology, Vol. 43, No. 1 (February 2002), pp. 149-152 - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...338288

anthropology paradigm disease research

shared by Erin Meachem on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Tierney served our profession with a sorely needed wakeup call unprecedented in its effectiveness, whatever the negative consequences that inevitably accompany controversies and scandals and to whatever degree his numerous and diverse allegations prove true.
  • Tierney exposed the ugliest affair in the entire history of anthropology. It cannot be summarily dismissed by a vocal minority as simply a matter of personal animosities, turf war, postmodernist critique of science or scientism, objectivist versus activist, differing interpretations of Yanomami aggression, sensationalist or tabloid journalism, etc. As Susan Lindee recognizes and contrary to Raymond Hames, not all of the fundamental claims made by Tierney have been discussed, let alone refuted.
  • the Pandoras box opened by Tierney should be examined and debated within the framework of the ethics and politics of knowledge production in the West, and that includes professional, ethical, and moral responsibility toward the communities who host research. The three basic questions I raised at the open forum on this controversy at the last AAA convention remain: What have the Yanomami contributed to us? What have we contributed to the Yanomami, for better and for worse? How are professional ethics and human rights involved?
  • Erin Meachem on 04 Feb 13
     
    This reflection is written by one of the men who sent the email to the president and president-elect of the AAA.
James Granderson

Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney - 3 views

books.google.com/books

darkness Yanomami scientists

shared by James Granderson on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • James Granderson on 04 Feb 13
     
    This is a preview of the book.
Erin Brennan

http://anthroniche.com/darkness_documents/0619.pdf - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0619.pdf

shared by Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
Erin Brennan liked it
    • Erin Brennan
      Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
       
      For some reason I cannot highlight this article but I wanted to point out that this is important because Chagnon is making his own statements defending his work
  • Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
     
    Napoleon Chagnon protests the claims by Dirk Wittenborn, an author of a novel titled "Fierce People" that calls Chagnon's anthropological work " thoroughly biased and even fabricated". Chagnon argues that the Survival International debate is a "libelous misrepresentation" of his work.
James Granderson

El Dorado Interim Report/Request for Information - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0459.htm

taskforce neel vaccination darkness allegations radioactive

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
Erin Brennan liked it
  • El Dorado Task Force
  • activities that may have resulted in personal gain to scientists, anthropologists and journalists while contributing harm to the Yanomami
  • activities by anthropologists, scientists and journalists that may have contributed to malnutrition, disease and disorganization
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • evolution of various codes of ethics and ethical guidelines existing during the time a particular set of actions occurred
  • That damaging representations of the Yanomami were published and repeated even after such representations were criticized as likely to cause them harm
  • That a program of vaccination of Yanomami undertaken by James Neel in 1968 caused an epidemic of measles
  • That practices of anthropologists in the field were unethical, ignoring legal constraints and ethics codes and tending, either through oversight or purposefully, to exacerbate violence, spread disease, and violate the dignity of individual Yanomami through, for instance, inappropriate sexual relations
  • our response to the allegations will not always be to determine whether they are true or false, since in many cases this is simply undeterminable.
  • That anthropologists, especially Americans, and others generally ignored threats to the Yanomami and gave the highest priority to continuing established programs of research of no immediate benefit to the Yanomami
  • That anthropologists and others working with the Yanomami have not adequately addressed malnutrition, disease, and disorganization among them
  • That experiments involving the injection of radioactive iodine were carried out among the Yanomami without attention to the principles of informed consent then in effect
  • James Granderson on 06 Feb 13
     
    Interim report that details specific allegations made against Neel and anthropologists in "Darkness in El Dorado." 
James Granderson

Napoleon Chagnon Elected to the National Academy of Sciences - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0001.htm

Chagnon darkness Neel noblesavages measles

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • His election not only vindicates Chagnon of unfounded accusations that have undermined his reputation and career, but is an achievement that reflects well upon our discipline.
  • highest honors bestowed upon a US scientist.
  • complex nature of humans as alternately cruel and kind, both warlike and peaceable
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Inspired by Patrick Tierny’s Darkness in El Dorado, which accused Chagnon and deceased geneticist James Neel of intentionally infecting Yanomamö Indians with measles, the AAA set up the “El Dorado Task Force” (TF) to examine Chagnon and Neel’s ethical conduct
  • relegate this shameful event into history and restore Chagnon’s reputation as one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century
  • is developing a large, institutionally accessible database containing genealogical and demographic data, population and conflict histories, photographs, maps and other unpublished data on large, remote villages in the Siapa Basin
  • Noble Savages: My Life among Two Dangerous Tribes, the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists
James Granderson

Napoleon Chagnon, Anthropologist, Discusses His Dramatic Career from Northern Michigan - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0305.htm

Chagnon measles missionary Sanchez Asch Padilha darkness

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Yanomamö: The Fierce People
  • 1968 University of Michigan medical expedition
  • Chagnon
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • deadly measles epidemic
  • Brazilian gold rush on the Yanomamö
  • this of course conflicted with ethical or moral principles.
  • How did that measles epidemic get started? Chagnon: It was introduced to the Yanomamö in Brazil. The young daughter of a missionary brought it back from a trip to Manaus. The incubation period is about two weeks—she was perfectly healthy when she left Manaus. There’s good documentation of this origin of the 1968 epidemic. The missionary published this account, and it should have ended there. All serious investigators accept this account.
  • First published in 1968, Yanomamö: The Fierce People is arguably the best selling anthropology textbook of all time (move over Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa). But Chagnon’s career has been as tumultuous as it has been epic. For decades his peers hotly debated his view that humans had, as he describes it, an "evolved nature in addition to a learned nature." Then a book released in 2000, Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon, by Patrick Tierney, turned those academic skirmishes into all-out war on Chagnon and his career.
  • a new movie, Secrets of the Tribe, made by Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, resurrects the old charges, again insinuating Chagnon’s guilt in the Amazon measles affair. And once again, Chagnon is waging a defense.
  • Chagnon: What I do is collect factual, empirical data as distinct from dealing only in subjective stories like myths as some cultural anthropologists do. I’m trying to push the study of societies toward an empirical set of scientific procedures. I do, however, also collect and study myths, the understanding of which lies more in the arena of comparative literature … which can also be studied scientifically, even with evolutionary theory, as some of my former students do.
  • We were able to show with my census data that 25 people died of an upper respiratory infection a day or two before, including the headman and a very famous leader I had known for 25 years.
  • In July of 1993 Brazilian gold miners brutally attacked a Yanomamö village, decapitating women and children with machetes and murdering about a dozen people in all.
  • In fact, you actually allowed Padilha access to the valuable footage that you and filmmaker Timothy Asch shot of the Yanomamö.
  • persuaded me about his firm commitment to truth, the scientific method, and objectivity in reporting, I allowed him access to my films. Then when the film came out it was just a piece of trash.
  • Chagnon: The film ignorantly misrepresents the facts.
  • was horrified to find, in 1968, that the Salesian Priest, Padre Sanchez, had a Brazilian man with an active case of measles at this mission and urged him to get this man out or he would expose all of the Yanomamö to the disease—and told him that the Yanomamö were now coming back from Patanowä-teri where they had attended a feast.
  • James Granderson on 06 Feb 13
     
    In an interview, Chagnon explains his take on how the measles epidemic was really introduced. 
  • Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
     
    Damning accusations have been publicly and factually refuted and Chagnon's reputation largely cleared, but...
Stephanie Hegarty

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CEAQFjAC&url=http%3... - 2 views

www.google.com/url

darkness Neel

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 06 Feb 13
     
    a devastating measles epidemic broke out "coincident with," to use Neel's phrasing, his arrival in the field in 1968. Neel indicated he had brought two thousand doses of measles vaccine and had planned to hand these over to mis- sionaries in the region. But faced with the epidemic, Neel and his team vaccinated many Yanomami as well. Here is how Neel described his actions: "Much of our carefully designed protocol for that expedition was quickly scrapped as we dashed from village to village, organizing the missionaries, ourselves doing our share of immunizations but also treatment when we reached villages to which measles had preceded us. We always carried a gross, almost ridiculous excess of antibi- otics - now we needed everything we had, and radioed for more" (1994:162). To what degree this description accurately reflects Neel's actions during the epidemic is one of the critical questions in the controversy. Tierney accused Neel of wors- ening the measles epidemic through his actions; others have suggested Neel could have done more than he did to save Yanomami lives during the epidemic.
zach ruch

Anthropological Niche of Douglas W. Hume - Biographies - 2 views

anthroniche.com/...biographies.html

Biographies

shared by zach ruch on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Timothy Asch, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California
  • While studying at Columbia University, he worked as a teaching assistant for Margaret Mead who got him interested in the potential use of visual media for instruction. He was intrigued by this field, and that’s probably why he made this his life long passion and career.
  • Napoleon Chagnon is a Professor of Sociobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • During his studies, Napoleon spent time in very remote villages so he could better understand the warfare, as well as other social features of the Yanomamo.
  • James Van Gundia Neel, professor emeritus of human genetics and internal medicine, died of cancer Feb. 1 at his home in Ann Arbor. He was 84. An internationally renowned scientist, Neel was a pioneer in the study of human genetics and one of the first to foresee its importance in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions
  • Patrick Tierney, author of Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon-W.W. Norton & Co., 2000
Stephanie Hegarty

Response to Allegations against James V. Neel in Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney - 3 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC384880

epidemic darkness allegations

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The most serious charge accuses Neel of deliberately initiating a 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomami by using a hazardous and contraindicated vaccine to test theories about human evolution, “leadership genes,” and infectious diseases.
  • Various other allegations against Neel in Tierney’s book include the following:1.That he failed to provide medical care to the Yanomami during the measles epidemic.2.That the Yanomami population-genetics studies directed by Neel were performed as controls for comparison with work on mutation detection among the survivors of the atomic bombing in Japan.3.That Neel performed unethical experiments on the Yanomami, involving radioactive iodine injections.4.That he sought to demonstrate the existence of a “leadership gene” among the Yanomami headmen.5.That Neel was somehow involved in administering plutonium injections into patients in the Rochester hospital where he was a medical house officer in the 1940s.6.That he discounted the risks of atomic radiation.7.That Neel denounced modern American society and advocated improving the human race by principles of coercive eugenics.
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13
     
    "The most serious charge accuses Neel of deliberately initiating a 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomami by using a hazardous and contraindicated vaccine to test theories about human evolution, "leadership genes," and infectious diseases."
Stephanie Hegarty

The Yanomami Scandal - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0257.htm

darkness deaths measles

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • His accusations against Chagnon also implicate him in the epidemic, arguing that he administered a counter-indicated vaccine on Neel's instructions; but Tierney's major charges are different and various. He claims that Chagnon interfered massively with the lives of the Yanomami in all sorts of ways.
  • The charges that James Neel induced a measles epidemic among the Yanomami or at least treated them like guinea pigs to be studies while the epidemic ran its course have been disputed by medical experts and others who know about Neel’s research. If these charges are without merit, as now seems probable, then the only accusations remaining against Neel depend on innuendo and guilt by association. In the final chapter of his book Tierney retells the disgraceful story of how American doctors experimented on unwitting subjects in the USA whom they referred to in their files as "human products."
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13
     
    "The New Yorker have created a furor, Patrick Tierney, an investigative journalist, has accused both Neel and Chagnon of committing serious abuses against the Yanomami. He charges Neel with instigation of, or at the very least doing little or nothing to deal with, the serious measles epidemic among the Yanomami that resulted in thousands of deaths. "
Mia Gooding

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.
Mia Gooding

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.
Mia Gooding

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
  • " set off a frenzy of media competition
  • 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."
  • only ABC's John Quiñones asked
  • "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.
J Scott Hill

Friday Five: Leading Digital Ethnographers | Edelman Digital - 0 views

www.edelmandigital.com/...-leading-digital-ethnographers

digital ethnography anthropologists web2.0

shared by J Scott Hill on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 23 Jan 13
     
    This five anthropologists are good example of how anthropologists are contributing to the understanding of how information technology is transforming us.  Equally important, they illustrate the many applied and basic research endeavors for anthropologists on the web.
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