Talk:Darkness in El Dorado

This whole article manages to completely avoid even a hint at what terrible crimes the anthropologists were accused of - did they kill and eat the natives, violate the Prime Directive, sell uranium buttons, what?? Stan 18:53, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

They did not, not at all, Stan, although Chagnon joined forces with strongly rejected Venezuelan political figures. It seems that he was aware of how corrupt this guys were, and that's what make his behavior unethical, not his research. The books is terribly flawed; besides the manipulation and forging of dubious information by Tierney, more troubling and obscure is Tierney's relationship with the New Tribes Mission and his quite homophobic remarks about certain anthropologists and Yanomami. BTW, what are you calling "Prime Directive"? Isn't that from Star Trek? Tierney accused (justly) some filmmakers (not Chagnon) of doing something that is preached by Star Trek's Prime Directive: not intervening. Quite contrary to the TV show, any socially conscious research would consider following Star Trek's Prime Directive as quite unethical and criminal, actually! From Venezuela, dalegrett 15:21, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Having just read the book I am puzzled by the comments regarding Tierney's supposedly "homophobic" remarks. He is rightfully critcial of Lizot's trading of goods for sex. There is nothing homophobic about that at all.

There is very little in the article about the substance of Tierney's arguments or the controversy that followed its publication. Moreover, dwelling on the allusions in the title (to El Dorado and Joseph Conrad) hardly seem relevant. Mere fluff that fills out the article without really saying anything about topic. --picaraza 05:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm new to wikipedia, so I don't know how we'd go about this, but is there any way to unlink Terry Turner's name in this article from the TV producer of the same name?

Alice Dreger friends with Chagnon

Mt144216 points out that Dregeris a personal friend of Chagnon. I don't dispute that they are friends, but think we should strive towards a more even handed contextualization of this issue. From Dreger's piece: "I did not know any of the major players in this history when I began researching it, but as is probably clear in this paper, what I found made me progressively outraged, and also sympathetic to Chagnon, Neel, and their families. The Chagnon and Neel families have been effusive in their thanks to me, and I believe at this point Chagnon considers me a friend, and I would call him my friend, although we hardly agree on everything." I don't feel that Mt144216 does a good job of encompassing these facts---and what sounds more like a professional than personal friendship to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pengortm (talk • contribs) 13:29, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

A more general point

Why must I come here for information on this controversy and find more "facts" (unsourced and unattributed) in the discussion page than in the main body of the argument?

This article says essentially that Chagnon was exonerated of "the most serious charges" by one inquiry, but does not list those charges or deal with the factual issues in the debate.

And I am pretty sure that U. Mich was not the only body looking into this.

I say that this is a prime candidate for an WP:NPOV debate.

Because it it not enough to state a handful of true, or generally true, or true in some sense or another, or truthy, factoids to support general conclusion about the outcome of the debate.

That is nothing more than confirmation bias.

It must be shown that OTHER FACTS IN EVIDENCE have NOT BEEN OMMITTED and that a representative sample of all relevant viewpoints have been taken into account.

And just who wrote this article anyway?

I think Wikipedia's policy of allowing anonymous authorship as the rule rather than the exception is a fundamental travesty.

-- CBrayton]

This is an article with an NPOV problem

I don't know the process for the initiating this (I dug for a bit and it confused me) but you can see the article lacks a neutral point of view. I came here to find out what the book's arguments are and they simply aren't here--instead, it's replaced with what is a cherry-picked set of "rebutted" points. I thought I was missing something and several other people on the discussion page seem to have the same problem. I came to this article after the controversy at the American Anthropological Association and it's clear there's been some lopsided edits. I can't edit the article myself since I haven't read the book and if someone who has could provide encyclopdedic information about the book--without editorializing--I would be ecstatic. But this definitely needs to be picked out for a WP:NPOV problem. 216.15.36.38 (talk) 03:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Chagnon

The article was missing what made the book so shocking; it was not the sexual allegations per se. It's who Chagnon is. He's the one who put the tribe on the anthropological map, making them famous. Making them possibly better protected than other, less celebrated Amazonian tribes.
So Chagnon is simultaneously their critic and their saviour, their defender.
So in that sense he's the last person you are expecting such allegations to concern. And he's accused of tampering with the Prime Directive for field work, to observe/study/comprehend/report, not to change or fuck up.
I have quickly added a sentence, but that should be done much better.
Varlaam (talk) 18:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Hoax categorization

The term "hoax" seems somewhat stronger than what critics appear to be saying. Is it fairer to assign it to Category:Controversies?
Varlaam (talk) 07:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Sourcing

I think this page should be making more use of secondary sources such as Borofsky 2005 [1]. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 23:50, 30 August 2013 (UTC)