Anthropologist discusses his position in an 'ethics firestorm' in his field

By Franklin Crawford

Last week in the sedate confines of a Goldwin Smith Hall classroom, Terence Turner addressed the controversy surrounding Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. Turner's March 14 talk was the second in a new speaker series called "Conversations in Ethics: Ethics Across the Disciplines," sponsored by Cornell's Program on Ethics and Public Life.

Professor Terence Turner lectures in Goldwin Smith Hall, March 14. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

Turner, Cornell professor of anthropology, calmly divulged layers of complexity in the ethical morass he's slogged through ever since W.W. Norton publishers sent him advance galleys of Tierney's book. Darkness in El Dorado accuses certain researchers, namely James Neel and Napoleon Chagnon, of human rights abuses and other misconduct in their fieldwork with the Yanomami, an indigenous people of the Amazon River basin. When Turner and Leslie Sponsel, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, reviewed the book last summer, they said Tierney's allegations were "unparalleled in the history of anthropology."

Turner and Sponsel reported their concerns about the allegations, via e-mail, to officers of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), advising a formal investigation. That memo was anonymously leaked to the press, adding fuel to what U.S. News and World Report called an "ethics firestorm." The story burned through the media last fall, until it was smothered by coverage of the protracted American presidential race.

Turner, who says he was merely seeking the truth, has since found himself attacked by defenders of Neel and Chagnon. "I've been called a 'leftist academic' and an 'anti-scientific culturalogist,'" Turner told the audience of mostly Cornell faculty and graduate students. "I've also been called a 'post-modern Marxist,' which, I think, is a conflict in terms."

Tierney's most damning allegations are reported in Chapter 5 of his book and concern a 1968 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission-funded research project led by the late Neel, a human geneticist the University of Michigan. But Tierney also alleges serious misconduct and fraud on the part of Chagnon, now a retired anthropologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

"Tierney was as good as saying that Neel knowingly inflicted a measles epidemic upon the Yanomami as part of an experiment for his own scientific project," Turner said. "If true, that would have put Neel in the same boat with Mengele. It was damned inflammatory."

Since then, a Brazilian investigative team revealed that, in a remarkable coincidence, an outbreak of measles occurred just prior to Neel's arrival in 1968. The outbreak occurred on the Brazilian side of the Yanomami territory and traveled down the Orinoco River into Venezuela.

"The disease arrived within three days of the Neel expedition," Turner said. "The measles broke out among the Yanomami after Neel's vaccinations, so you can see how Tierney got it wrong."

In December Turner, accompanied by Cornell research assistant John Stevens, traveled to the American Philosophical Society's archives in Philadelphia to study Neel's 1968 papers and field journals. What they found refuted several of Tierney's allegations and corroborated the Brazilian report on the measles outbreak, Turner said. However, Turner said his latest research didn't necessarily clear Neel of ethical misdoing. For instance, Neel had the option of bringing a safer vaccine than the Edmonston B he carried, Turner said. Also, he said, it appears Neel made no effort to secure informed consent from the Yanomami for either the vaccinations or biological samplings. (Blood and samples were taken for the AEC's research on the effects of radiation.)

Turner also questioned whether or not Neel, faced with an epidemic, erred toward the pursuit of research as opposed to caring for the Yanomami. The answer is moot for Neel, who died in February 2000. But the ethical quandaries remain.

"To question Neel's methods is not to attack science, but to call attention to the ethical implications for individuals faced with conflicting demands," said Turner, who heads to the University of Michigan -- source of several e-mail attacks on him -- this Friday, to deliver a similar paper on the topic.

Turner is more concerned about outstanding and potentially criminal allegations against Chagnon from Tierney, the Venezuelan government and others, charges that Turner believes have validity. Such as: Chagnon's alleged specious relations with gold mining interests; his efforts to set up a personal research park in Yanomami territory; and Chagnon's alleged involvement with corrupt Venezuelan officials who are now under indictment. The Venezuelan government has forbidden Chagnon from entering Yanomami territory, Turner said.

"In the rush to defend Neel and Chagnon, at least one scholar has gone so far as to say the whole book is a fraud," Turner said. "That's simply tendentious arrogance. Aside from Tierney's mistakes in Chapter 5, the rest of his documentation is based on objective matters of public record."

Next month a special AAA ad hoc investigative committee will meet to discuss the controversy, including some of Chagnon's alleged improprieties. The Venezuelan and Brazilian governments are investigating the matter, and Turner is still sifting through the evidence, keeping his cool and fine-tuning his viewpoint based on new information from the Neel archives.