Darkness in El Dorado
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| Author | Patrick Tierney |
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| Language | English |
| Published | 2000 |
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Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon (2000) is a polemical book by author Patrick Tierney, in which the author accuses geneticist James Neel and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon of conducting human research without regard for their subjects' well-being while conducting long-term ethnographic field work among the indigenous Yanomamö, in the Amazon Basin between Venezuela and Brazil. He also wrote that the researchers had exacerbated a measles epidemic among the Native Americans. Tierney also claims that Jacques Lizot and Kenneth Good committed acts of sexual impropriety with Yanomamö.
While the book was positively reviewed and well received at first, later investigations by multiple independent organizations found Tierney's main allegations to be false and libelous.
Claims made in Darkness in El Dorado included the following:
In 2000, Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado, which accused geneticist James Neel and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon of exacerbating a measles epidemic among the Yanomamo people, among other damning allegations. This work initially received good reviews and was nominated for a National Book Award. Many of Tierney's accusations against Chagnon were accepted as fact in a New York Times book review by science journalist John Horgan; the resulting political controversy resulted in Chagnon's early retirement.John Tooby of Slate, thought the book was internally inconsistent and suggested that it should have been identified as fiction.
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