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"This would be unfortunate, for the book offers a controversial account of the impact of Western research on an indigenous population that should urge us to think hard about our work. Even before its publication, Darkness in El Dorado became a Janusfaced text that in calling attention to methodological and ethical shortcomings of scientific research in the Amazon also brought attention to faults in its own production. This should not obscure its contribution or make us forget that the central issue in this drama, after all, should be the Yanomami" "At the books heart is a twostranded argument concerning the work among the Yanomami by the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the geneticist James Neel. One strand follows their involvement in a complex set of medical practices centering on the collection of blood samples and a measles vaccination campaign. The other traces Chagnons spectacular career as the creator of the Yanomami as anthropologys wellknown fierce people. While Tierneys focus is on individuals, his book locates them in two relevant contexts: the cold war and the Vietnam War, during which currents of evolutionary genetics, sociobiology, and cultural anthropology claiming that aggression plays a positive role in human evolution found broad support, and the Venezuelan petrostate culture of clientelism, which fostered a network of corrupt politicians and businessmen with interests in the Yanomami and their territory for reasons of profit and power. His discussion argues that the work of Chagnon, Neel, and other scientists brought the Yanomami neither empowerment nor wellbeing but fragmentation and destruction" "The first strand of the book, which occupies less than onetenth of Tierneys text but has received the most public attention, argues that Neel and Chagnon collected blood samples for the Atomic Energy Commission to compare mutation rates in populations contaminated by radiation with those in one uncontaminated by it and at the same time carried out

"However, some important points are mistaken or missing. Contrary to Alan Fix, research on Yanomami began not in the 1960s but as early as 1800. Now there are more than 60 books, albeit of widely varying quality, on aspects of Yanomami. Sufficient literature exists to recognize a field of specializationYanomami Studies or Yanomamology. It is possible to identify points of agreement and disagreement among the numerous and diverse writers who have published on Yanomami and draw conclusions" "None of some 60 books previously published on the Yanomami ever drew attention to the violations of professional ethics and abuses of human rights by anthropologists in the ways and to the extent that Tierney does. Not one of those books was subjected to a panel discussion and open forum at any AAA convention, any forum in a journal like CA, investigations in three countries, discussions in international media and cyberspace, etc" "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."