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The New Yorker Replies

Posted Saturday, Oct. 28, 2000, at 3:45 AM ET

This article, by the editors of The New Yorker, is a response to "Jungle Fever," which Slate published earlier this week.

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Even before Patrick Tierney's "The Fierce Anthropologist" was published in The New Yorker, it prompted a barrage of outlandish charges and countercharges. Tierney, after all, was about to publish a book about one of the most controversial figures in modern anthropology, Napoleon Chagnon. And, as John Tooby points out, Chagnon's work has been enlisted in highly charged disputes within the social sciences. So it's easy to imagine a sensationalist article of the sort Tooby is responding to. But you won't find it in the pages of The New Yorker.

Did Tierney accuse Napoleon Chagnon of "genocide"? No. Tierney did raise serious questions about the choice of vaccines that James Neel and Chagnon used on indigenous Indians. A vaccine that was much less reactive and more widely used than Edmonston B was available, and although Edmonston B was, as Tierney notes, generally thought to be safe, there were concerns about its safety among isolated or immuno-suppressed people. Did Tierney write that an "immunization program can start an epidemic"? Again, no. The article did not claim that the vaccine spread the virus; Tierney noted Neel's statement that the vaccination was an "exercise in preventive medicine," and nowhere has Tierney questioned the immense value of vaccination programs around the world. (As for Susan Lindee's views on whether Neel had permission to carry out the program, click here.)

Has The New Yorker erred in characterizing Neel as a eugenicist? Here Tooby makes the common mistake (echoed in Turner and Sponsel's memo) of simply equating eugenic thought with the politics of the far right. Neel's eugenic concerns are spelled out, among other places, in his article "On Being Headman," in the Winter 1980 edition of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, where he bemoans "the loss of headmanship as a feature of our culture, as well as the weakening of other vehicles of natural selection." Eugenic concerns also run through his memoir, Physician to the Gene Pool.

More broadly, Tooby says that Tierney unfairly singles out Chagnon for "inadvertently introduc[ing] various diseases besides measles into the region just by going there." Chagnon has, Tooby maintains, been unfairly blamed for the actions of others. There are two caricatures to avoid here. One is a vision of the Yanomamö as denizens of a wholly pure and isolated realm. The other—which Tooby urges—is of a sort of Times Square in the jungle. Tierney's article carefully avoided either extreme. It underscored the dangers of contact with all outsiders, including "gold miners, journalists, missionaries [and] scientists," noting that outsiders were collectively to blame for their failure to take proper precautions (such as quarantining) and so causing "cultural disruption and epidemics." Tierney also took care to highlight how various were the ways of life and the degrees of contact among different groups of Yanomamö—for instance, those who lived near the missions and those who were still in the mountains. He pointed out that when Chagnon arrived a transition toward a greater degree of settlement was under way. He also noted how later events, such as the Brazilian gold rush, have accelerated that transition. Such a nuanced view is necessary for a serious appraisal of how Chagnon's actions affected Yanomamö villagers.

Tierney never claimed, then, that Chagnon was the sole cause of the violence he recorded. Tierney's research—and that of others, such as Brian Ferguson—does show that some of Chagnon's actions had the effect of promoting conflicts that he then attributed to the ferocity of the people he was studying. (Tooby writes, irrelevantly, that other pre-state societies have higher rates of violence, but he never refutes Tierney's argument that Chagnon's account of warfare among the Yanomamö was exaggerated.) Tierney pointed out that missionaries gave machetes to the Yanomamö, beginning in the '50s, and that it was a cause of warfare. But Chagnon's machete trade was distinctive, Tierney showed, and distinctly destabilizing. Chagnon provided machetes in exchange for the names of dead relatives, a violation of tribal taboos, and in doing so, he contributed to discord among the Yanomamö. Chagnon also gave some Yanomamö villages a large number of machetes at once in exchange for their participation in his research projects. In one case, Tierney reported, he created an alliance between two villages which resulted in a raid on a third village and a death. In another case, which Chagnon describes in his book Yanomami: The Fierce People, the act of choosing one village over another for collecting blood samples in exchange for machetes resulted in conflict. According to one tribal leader Tierney interviewed, Chagnon promised machetes to those who would take part in an alliance that Chagnon created in order to make the film The Feast.

It may speak to the balance, context, and thoughtfulness of Tierney's article that John Tooby, in the course of a lengthy critique, finds it convenient to quote almost none of it. But what finally distinguishes Tierney's work is the care that he has taken to listen to what Yanomamö themselves had to say about the experience of being studied by Chagnon. Drawing on his own years of travel and research in Yanomamö territory, Tierney concludes: "The villagers had combatted malnutrition, intestinal parasites, and, more recently, malaria. But what they could not comprehend—and what had shaken their world—was the sudden arrival of visitors who seemed to offer an easier life and, at the same time, sowed so much confusion. For them, Chagnon had come to personify everything that both attracted and repulsed them about our culture. They wanted him, and they didn't want him, and they could not forget him."

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By the Editors of The New Yorker

COMMENTS

Reader Comments from The Fray:

[Note from the Fray Editor: Defenders of The New Yorker were the endangered tribe here, hard to find. Perhaps they have measles. The attacks, on the other hand, were many and unsparing. And we at Slate are particularly appreciative of A.G.Android's point.]

Do the editors of The New Yorker merely wish to continue to insinuate wrong-doing on the part of Chagnon and Neel, or do they have serious evidence for us to consider? I hope these editors will also report their opinion on the relatively innocuous nature of Tierney's speculation to his publishers, W.W.Norton, who are still describing [Tierney's book] Darkness in El Dorado in the following terms: "Darkness in El Dorado is an explosive account of how ruthless journalists, self-serving anthropologists, and obsessed scientists placed one of the Amazon basin's oldest tribes on the cusp of extinction."

In this short response to Tooby's article the editors of The New Yorker effectively become collaborators in the Darkness in El Dorado project, first by implying that the use of the Edmonston B vaccine was questionable, despite unequivocal scientific testimony to the contrary, secondly by suggesting that Neel's views on broader genetic issues are somehow relevant to the vaccination programme and perhaps indicative of a disposition to engage in wrong-doing, and thirdly by implying that the work of Chagnon was somehow of greater consequence than far more significant disruptive forces operating in the territory of the Yanomamö such as missionaries, gold miners, and Venezuelan government officials. Did "ruthless journalists, self-serving anthropologists, and obsessed scientists place one of the Amazon basin's oldest tribes on the cusp of extinction" or are ruthless journalists and self-serving media tycoons currently pursuing their own interests irrespective of the consequences?

I have to say that I'm utterly dismayed by the standards of journalism I have witnessed since the Turner and Sponsel memo was unleashed on the world on September 19th.

--Ian Pitchford

[Editor, Evolutionary Psychology Online, University of Sheffield, UK]

(To reply, or to read a longer version of this post, click here.)

The great thing about The New Yorker's self-defense is that the anonymous editors--who understandably preferred not to have their names associated with the piece--wind up arguing in blustery, self-righteous tones that the Tierney article said nothing at all. The New Yorker, they assure us, devoted pages and pages to an article that said an anthropologist, decades ago, didn't commit genocide, didn't use a dangerous vaccine, didn't believe in eugenics in any bad sense of the word (though I'm still not sure what the other sense is), and so on. Of course, if the editors believed a single word of their defense, they would never have run Tierney's piece in the first place.

Can't you just see it? Annals of Paleontology: New research reveals that a Yale professor used non-controversial methods in 1952 South Dakota dig. Reporter at Large: A simmering lack of dispute marks the thirtieth anniversary of a linguistics lecture at the University of Madison. The Wayward Press: Few people remember, let along quarrel with, the article on page 37 of the second issue of Lingua Franca.

Incidentally, for anyone tempted to take seriously the editors' taunt about the lack of quotes, see Toobey's web page, which demolishes Tierney to the point of making it a serious question whether Tierney was, all along, engaged in a hoax to which The New Yorker and W.W. Norton fell victim.

--Anastasia Salinger

(To reply, click here.)

I am not a major player in this putrid journalistic attack on Chagnon and Neel, but I have read the relevant internet postings, and I am quite literate in both social and natural science. My judgement is that this affair is a big, black mark on The New Yorker, on postmodern anthropology, and on science journalism in general.

The New Yorker's reply to Tooby is pathetic. First, you don't publish excerpts from a slanderous, sloppy book, even if you don't publish the slanderous parts in the excerpts. Second, the fact that there were "concerns" about using a vaccine (concerns that all medical authorities brand as unwarranted) is not the basis for criticism of medical interventions, in cases where the expected benefits far outweigh the possible, remote, costs. Third, believing that it is good for natural selection to work is not in any way a support for eugenics. Eugenics is the support for artificial selection in humans. The New Yorker is pathetic in defending this attack on Neel. Simply pathetic. Fourth, The New Yorker agrees that Chagnon was one of several influences on the Yanomamo, but still thinks it is valid to single him out for criticism, with no sense of the relative harm done by dozens of missionaries, many bloodthirsty gold miners, and a few anthropologists---who, by the way, administered medical aid to the people they worked with. This is simply yellow journalism. Fifth, they defend Tierney for using quotes from Yanomamo who condemn Chagnon. How hypocritical! There isn't a human being alive who couldn't be effectively slandered by selective quote from those who dislike him or her, or who simply receive favors for slandering the journalist's current victim.

The New Yorker, which has published so much great science stuff (e.g., their article on Freud and psychoanalysis, and their reporting on the false memories 'movement' in psychotherapy), have lost it here. Some heads should roll

--Herbert M.Gintis

[Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts]

(To reply, click here.)

I wonder how often The New Yorker allows similar responses by people it treats negatively, with the response given equal prominence to the original article? I sure don't remember that happening recently. Perhaps such establishment publications should follow the example of online journalists in such matters.

--A.G.Android

(To reply, click here.)

Seems to me that The New Yorker, without breaking a sweat, has shown that Tooby never identified a single error in its Yanomamo story. Tooby's piece, with all its huffing and puffing, veers from a piece of hysterical email circulated by a couple of detractors at Cornell to generalizations about Tierney's book. But you do get the idea--gently suggested by The New Yorker's response--that Tooby wrote the thing before he read the article, and didn't take much notice of it since. I'm no expert on this debate. But the truth is, I found The New Yorker response all the more devastating for its coolly dispassionate, imperturbable tone.

--Sarah Chen

(To reply, click here.)

[One reader replied: "Oh please, that wasn't dispassion, that was having no defense."]

This response was categorically tendentious. The points are all argued with evident dishonesty and ass-covering. Many times the article drifts off-topic in its efforts to grope about for a fig leaf. My reaction was to side even more with Tooby. Clearly The New Yorker has fallen into the camp of the reactionaries on this point, and is incapable of arguing itself out of the mess without resorting to cheap, fallacious, discredited argument.

--Brian

(To reply, click here.)

(10/30)

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