Darkness in El Dorado

Based on Wikipedia: Darkness in El Dorado

The Book That Destroyed Reputations—Including Its Author's

In the year 2000, a bombshell dropped on the academic world. Patrick Tierney, a journalist with a flair for the dramatic, published Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. The accusations inside were explosive: renowned scientists had deliberately caused a genocide among an indigenous people. The book was nominated for a National Book Award. Major newspapers praised it. Careers ended.

There was just one problem. The book was a fraud.

This is the story of how a compelling narrative can overwhelm facts, how academic institutions can become complicit in spreading lies, and how the truth eventually—painfully, belatedly—won out.

The Yanomami and the Scientists Who Studied Them

Deep in the Amazon rainforest, straddling the border between Venezuela and Brazil, live the Yanomami people. They are one of the largest indigenous groups in South America to have remained relatively isolated from outside contact until the mid-twentieth century. Their remote location, scattered across thousands of square miles of dense jungle, kept them largely unknown to the outside world until anthropologists and geneticists began visiting in the 1960s.

Two scientists became particularly associated with Yanomami research. Napoleon Chagnon was an anthropologist who spent years living among the Yanomami, documenting their customs, conflicts, and daily lives. His 1968 book Yanomamö: The Fierce People became one of the most widely read ethnographies ever published, assigned in countless university courses. James Neel was a geneticist interested in studying human populations that had remained isolated—their DNA could offer insights into human evolution and the genetics of disease.

Both men conducted extensive fieldwork among the Yanomami over many years. Both became targets of Tierney's accusations.

The Accusations

Tierney's book made claims that, if true, would rank among the most horrifying crimes in scientific history.

The most explosive allegation: Chagnon and Neel had caused a measles epidemic that killed hundreds of Yanomami. According to Tierney, they had administered a measles vaccine that was "insufficiently attenuated"—in plain terms, a vaccine containing live measles virus that was still strong enough to cause the disease rather than prevent it. The implication was clear. These scientists had either deliberately or recklessly unleashed a deadly epidemic on an isolated people with no immunity.

But Tierney went further. He claimed the Yanomami research project was secretly connected to the Atomic Energy Commission's Cold War experiments on human subjects—the same shadowy programs that had exposed unwitting Americans to radiation. He alleged that Chagnon had fabricated or misrepresented his data, and had actually incited violence among the Yanomami to make them appear more warlike than they really were.

The book also accused other researchers of sexual misconduct. Jacques Lizot, a French anthropologist who was a protégé of the famous Claude Lévi-Strauss, allegedly exploited young Yanomami boys. Kenneth Good, an American researcher, had married a Yanomami girl when she was, according to Tierney, barely entering her teens.

The Initial Response: Belief

The book landed with devastating effect. Science journalist John Horgan, writing in The New York Times, accepted many of Tierney's accusations as fact. The American Anthropological Association, or AAA, took the charges seriously enough to form an investigative task force. Napoleon Chagnon, exhausted by the controversy and facing professional ostracism, took early retirement.

Why did so many people believe Tierney? Several factors converged.

First, there was the broader historical context. By 2000, the public had learned about genuinely horrifying experiments conducted by scientists on unwitting subjects: the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which Black men were deliberately left untreated so researchers could observe the disease's progression; the radiation experiments on hospital patients; the psychological torture experiments funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. Real scientific atrocities had occurred. Tierney's claims seemed to fit an established pattern.

Second, Chagnon was already a controversial figure. His portrayal of the Yanomami as "fierce" people had drawn criticism from anthropologists who felt he sensationalized their violence and fed harmful stereotypes about indigenous peoples. Some academics welcomed accusations against a colleague they had long disliked.

Third, Tierney was a skilled writer. His narrative was compelling, his tone authoritative. He deployed footnotes and citations that created an appearance of rigorous scholarship.

The Unraveling

But the story began to fall apart almost immediately when experts examined the details.

The measles vaccine accusation crumbled first. Medical researchers pointed out that the vaccine Neel had used—the Edmonston B vaccine—had been administered to millions of people around the world. It was a standard vaccine, not some experimental weapon. While this particular vaccine could cause mild symptoms (which is why it was later replaced by better alternatives), it did not and could not cause a full measles outbreak. The medical consensus was unequivocal: the vaccine prevented measles; it did not cause it.

The University of Michigan, where Neel had worked, launched its own investigation. The provost's office systematically examined Tierney's claims and, in November 2000—just weeks after the book's publication—refuted almost all of them.

Even the scientists who had initially promoted Tierney's accusations backed down. Terence Turner and Leslie Sponsel, two anthropologists who had written an alarmed memo to the AAA warning of the book's revelations, admitted that their most serious charge against Neel "remains an inference in the present state of our knowledge." There was, they conceded, no "smoking gun."

In fact, the evidence pointed in exactly the opposite direction. Neel and Chagnon had not caused the measles epidemic—they had worked desperately to contain it, vaccinating as many Yanomami as possible and treating the sick.

The Investigations Multiply

What followed was an unusual spectacle: institution after institution examining the same accusations and reaching the same conclusion. Tierney's book was fraudulent.

The National Academy of Sciences condemned the book. The American Society of Human Genetics condemned it. The Medical Team of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro investigated the claims about inappropriate medical practices and found them false.

An outside investigative team, brought in after internal disagreements at the AAA, was blunt in its preliminary report. The book "appears to be deliberately fraudulent," they wrote. Tierney had "misconstrued or misrepresented his primary sources to a considerable degree in an effort to support his allegations."

This is a crucial point. Tierney did not simply make honest mistakes in interpreting complex evidence. According to the investigators, he had systematically altered and misrepresented sources to manufacture a false narrative. It was not Chagnon who had committed wrongdoing. It was Tierney.

The AAA's Reckoning

The American Anthropological Association found itself in an awkward position. It had initially given credence to Tierney's accusations. Its El Dorado Task Force, also known as the Peacock Commission, had supported Tierney and questioned Chagnon's conduct. The AAA board had accepted these findings in May 2002.

But as external investigations piled up, all reaching opposite conclusions, the pressure mounted. In 2005, the AAA membership voted to rescind the organization's support for the book. The vote was 846 to 338—a decisive rejection.

The AAA went further, issuing a remarkable admission of institutional failure. The organization acknowledged that it had "condoned a culture of accusation and allowed serious but unevaluated charges to be posted on its website and expressed in its newsletter and annual meetings." Its report, the AAA admitted, "has damaged the reputations of its targets, distracted public attention from the real sources of the Yanomamo tragedy and misleadingly suggested that anthropologists are responsible for Yanomamo suffering."

This was an extraordinary statement. A major professional organization was admitting that it had helped destroy the reputations of scientists based on false accusations.

Who Was Patrick Tierney?

As the accusations against Chagnon and Neel collapsed, attention turned to their accuser. Who was this Patrick Tierney, and how had he constructed such an elaborate fabrication?

Alice Dreger, a historian of medicine and science, spent a year investigating. What she found was remarkable.

Tierney had no training or employment in anthropology. He had no background as a professional journalist. But he had traveled extensively through South America—sometimes, according to Dreger's investigation, under a false identity. He had allegedly cheated gold buyers, entered Yanomami territory without legal permission, and carried poisonous mercury into the rainforest. One particularly disturbing allegation suggested his actions may have contributed to someone's death.

Most damning was the revelation about Tierney's sources. He claimed to rely heavily on a "dossier" of accusations against Chagnon compiled by Leda Martins, a Venezuelan anthropologist. But when Dreger contacted Martins, she denied writing the dossier. She had merely translated it into Portuguese.

According to Dreger's investigation, the dossier had been written by Tierney himself. He had manufactured evidence, attributed it to someone else, and then cited his own fabrication as an independent source.

The Complexities Left Behind

Not every accusation in Tierney's book was completely fabricated. Some issues remained genuinely contested.

The allegations against Kenneth Good, while presented sensationally by Tierney, touched on real ethical questions. Good had indeed married a Yanomami woman. In his own autobiographical accounts, Good described a relationship that developed over years, shaped by both Yanomami and American cultural norms. He was betrothed to his future wife, following local customs and community wishes, when she was still a child. They consummated the marriage, he wrote, when she was about fifteen or sixteen.

This raises genuine questions about anthropological ethics—about the relationships researchers form with the people they study, about cultural relativism and its limits, about power dynamics. But these are nuanced ethical questions, not accusations of criminal conduct. Tierney's sensationalized framing obscured rather than illuminated them.

Similarly, debates about Chagnon's interpretation of Yanomami culture continue. Some anthropologists argue his emphasis on violence was misleading or harmful. Others defend his work as accurate ethnography. This is a legitimate scholarly disagreement—the kind that exists in every academic field.

But scholarly disagreement is very different from accusations of causing genocide.

The Aftermath

Following the controversy, Patrick Tierney essentially disappeared from public life. He rarely appeared to defend his work, which is understandable given how thoroughly it had been discredited.

Napoleon Chagnon, after years in the wilderness, eventually experienced something of a rehabilitation. He continued to write and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. But the ordeal had taken a heavy toll. Years of his career were consumed by defending himself against false accusations.

James Neel, sadly, did not live to see his full vindication. He died in 2000, the same year the book was published, with the controversy still raging.

What Can We Learn?

The Darkness in El Dorado affair offers several uncomfortable lessons.

The first concerns the power of narrative. Tierney crafted a story that fit familiar templates: the arrogant Western scientists, the victimized indigenous people, the cover-up by powerful institutions. This narrative was emotionally compelling and politically satisfying to certain audiences. It felt true, even when it wasn't.

The second concerns institutional failure. The AAA, the New York Times, and other institutions that should have exercised skepticism instead amplified the accusations. They gave Tierney's claims credibility that helped them spread. When the truth emerged, retracting was much harder than the initial accusation had been.

The third concerns the asymmetry of accusation and defense. It takes a sentence to make an accusation. It takes years of investigations, reports, and votes to refute one. Even after vindication, the accused lives forever in a cloud of "controversy."

The final lesson is perhaps the most troubling. Patrick Tierney, despite being thoroughly discredited, despite the multiple investigations finding his work fraudulent, was never held to any serious account. He simply faded from view. The scientists whose reputations he attacked had no real recourse.

In academia, as in public life more broadly, we still haven't figured out how to protect people from deliberate falsehood while maintaining the open discourse that truth requires. The Yanomami controversy shows both the system eventually working—the truth did come out—and failing badly, as innocent people suffered for years before it did.

A Note on the Real Tragedy

Perhaps the saddest irony of the entire affair is captured in the AAA's own admission: the controversy "distracted public attention from the real sources of the Yanomamo tragedy."

The Yanomami have faced genuine threats: illegal gold mining that pollutes their rivers with mercury, deforestation that destroys their land, diseases brought by uncontrolled contact with outsiders, and governments that have often failed to protect their rights. These are the real sources of suffering, and they continue today.

Tierney's book, while claiming to expose crimes against the Yanomami, actually drew attention away from their real problems and toward a fabricated controversy. The scientists he accused were among the few outsiders who had spent years learning Yanomami languages and customs, who had documented their way of life, and who had worked to help them during disease outbreaks.

In trying to cast Chagnon and Neel as villains, Tierney didn't help the Yanomami. He just created a more compelling story for Western audiences—a story that happened to be false.