The fire works really start in the second half of the entry, where Marks asks “can we generalize from Napoleon Chagnon’s demonstration that murder and babies are correlated?” He writes:

What would it mean if Yanomamo murderers outbred non-murderers?  Well, if you believe that this is a bi-allelic system, then the Yanomamo murderer alleles would quickly swamp out the non-murderer alleles.  But of course only a fucking idiot would believe that. 

When Brian Ferguson (amongst others) made this point (without cursing) Chagnon said that “it looks as though [Ferguson’s] hypothesis doesn’t hold up”. To which Marks replies:

No, Chagnon is the one with a hypothesis, and his data are statistically inadequate to either confirm or deny it.  Moreover, when Nicholas Wade writes, “Dr. Chagnon said he was familiar with those criticisms but called them invalid and said none had been published in a peer-reviewed journal”  he puts an unchallenged falsehood in Chagnon’s mouth in support of this poor scientific reasoning… In science, if you make a claim, you have to demonstrate its validity and do the proper controls.  Or else shut up.  Really. That’s not an extravagant demand; it is an expectation.

Emphasis is in the original there folks.

Regarding the second issue in the Yanomami debate, “was Chagnon’s work rejected out of an anti-science ideological bias in anthropology?” Marks responds:

Are you fucking kidding me? Say that out loud and hear how stupid it sounds…The AAA voted not to strip the word “science” from its long range plan.  Yes, it was suggested (to emphasize the breadth of the scope of anthropology beyond the boundaries of science and encompassing the humanities as well); yes, it was put to a vote (because there was some feeling that it was a bad idea); and yes, it was voted down. 

Marks nails it right on the head when he writes:

It’s not that the opposition is against Darwinism; it’s that Darwinism is compatible with many understandings of human social behavior, including normative anthropology.  Nicholas Wade scowls at Marshall Sahlins, who recently resigned from the National Academy of Sciences partly over Chagnon’s election, by explaining that Sahlins opposes sociobiology, which Wade defines as “the idea that human social behavior is shaped by evolution and culture.” Actually… that’s not sociobiology, that’s anthropology!

It’s not that anthropology is against evolution, it’s that anthropology is against the perversion of evolution in support of idiosyncratic social theories, which recurs every generation.

Science, evolution, and anthropology are all on the same side.  The other side is where the anti-intellectuals and ideologues are, and have always been, the ones who either don’t understand evolution themselves, or are knowingly misrepresenting its implications to the public.

It seems a lot of anthropologists have had cause to write angry letters in response to Chagnon’s latest book: Sahlins, Fuentes and Marks here on Savage Minds, and a host of others elsewhere (see Anthropology Report for a good rundown). But I thought Jay Ruby’s criticism was unique enough that it deserved it’s own post. Sent to VISCOM, an email list for visual anthropology, Ruby wrote the following:

For me, the most annoying thing about this book is Chagnon’s attempt to erase Tim Asch’s contribution to the production of the Yanomamo films.  At one point, Chagnon even refers to the films as “my documentary films.” I knew Tim Asch as a friend and colleague.  We had many discussions about his collaboration with Chagnon.  Anyone interested in reading about Asch’s view of the collaboration should look at Chapter 4 of my book, Picturing Culture (2000, U of Chicago press). When it was commonly assumed that the best way to make an ethnographic film was for a filmmaker to collaborate with an ethnographer, The Asch-Chagnon collaboration was regarded as the model. Few people knew that the partnership was a disaster with Asch literally begging Chagnon to spend more time working on these films. Their relationship was so unpleasant that when Asch died in 1994, Chagnon refused to contribute to a planned memorial.  To say Chagnon’s treatment of Asch in this book is unjust and petty is an understatement.

• The photograph of Timothy Asch posted above is taken from the DER Timothy Asch website.

By the evidence of his own writings as well as the testimony of
others, including Amazonian peoples and professional scholars of the
region, Chagnon has done serious harm to the indigenous communities
among whom he did research. (See my review of Tierney in the Washington
Post, 2000, below). At the same time, his “scientific” claims about
human evolution and the genetic selection for male violence–as in the
notorious study he published in 1988 in Science–have proven to be
shallow and baseless, much to the discredit of the anthropological
disciple. At best, his election to the NAS was a large moral and
intellectual blunder on the part of members of the Academy. So much so
that my own participation in the Academy has become an embarrassment.

Sahlins’s low opinion of Chagnon is as old as everybody else’s, and amply documented in his widely-cited review of Darkness in El Dorado. There, he writes that

The truth claims of the argument presented by Chagnon in Science may have had the shortest half-life of any study ever published in that august journal. Chagnon set out to demonstrate statistically that known killers among the Yanomami had more than twice as many wives and three times as many children as non-killers. This would prove that humans (i.e., men) do indeed compete for reproductive advantages, as sociobiologists claimed, and homicidal violence is a main means of the competition. Allowing the further (and fatuous) assumption that the Yanomami represent a primitive stage of human evolution, Chagnon’s findings would support the theory that violence has been progressively inscribed in our genes.

But Chagnon’s statistics were hardly out before Yanomami specialists dismembered them by showing, among other things, that designated killers among this people have not necessarily killed, nor have designated fathers necessarily fathered. Many more Yanomami are known as killers than there are people killed because the Yanomami accord the ritual status of man-slayer to sorcerers who do death magic and warriors who shoot arrows into already wounded or dead enemies. Anyhow, it is a wise father who knows his own child (or vice versa) in a society that practices wife-sharing and adultery as much as the Yanomami do. Archkillers, besides, are likely to father fewer children inasmuch as they are prime targets for vengeance, a possibility Chagnon conveniently omitted from his statistics by not including dead fathers of living children. Nor did his calculations allow for the effects of age, shamanistic attainments, headship, hunting ability or trading skill–all of which are known on ethnographic grounds to confer marital advantages for Yanomami men.

Supporters of Chagnon, and lately Chagnon himself, have defended his sociobiology by referring to several other studies showing that men who incarnate the values of their society, whatever these values may be, have the most sex and children. Even granting this to be true–except for our society, where the rich get richer but the poor get children–this claim only demonstrates that the genetic impulses of a people are under the control of their culture rather than the other way around. For dominant cultural values vary from society to society, even as they may change rapidly in any given society. There is no universal selective pressure for violence or any other genetic disposition, nor could genes track the behavioral values varying rapidly and independently of them. It follows that what is strongly selected for in human beings is the ability to realize innate biological dispositions in a variety of meaningful ways, by a great number of cultural means. Violence may be inherently satisfying, but we humans can make war on the playing fields of Eton, by sorcery, by desecrating the flag or a thousand other ways of “kicking butt,” including writing book reviews. What evolution has allowed us is the symbolic capacity to sublimate our impulses in all the kinds of cultural forms that human history has known.

Sahlins is particularly suited to analyze debates about Chagnon because Sahlins has examined in detail how micro histories become macro histories and vice versa. Debates about the quality of Chagnon’s work really are not about Chagnon himself. Rather, they are opportunities for politically engaged anthropologists and holier than thou Anthropological Scientists to have their favorite argument. Again. The result is what Sahlins calls the ‘structural amplification’ of local disputes:

Feuding local groups assume the identities of larger collectivities – the way Catalan villagers, for example, became Frenchmen and Spaniards – and thereby engage these collectivities in their own petty issues. The structural effect is a chiastic pattern of affinities and enmities, as the greater entities also enter the lists against the lesser factions of the other side. In the upshot, the local causes are prosecuted as larger oppositions, and  the larger oppositions as local causes

I expect pissed-off lefties like Terry Turner to be ready to take the fight to the enemy. What I always find so depressing about these periods of academic blood letting is how poorly the ‘scientists’ behave as they extol an ideal of dispassionate objectivity while simultaneously savaging anyone who suggests to them that they may not be living up to their own ego ideal.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Jared Diamond because, despite his empirical errors, he has a program for a science of humanity that he has thought a lot about, and which is worthy of consideration. I don’t agree with most of what he says, but it is worth engaging, because thinking through it makes one smarter. None of this is true of Chagnon. I think Jon Marks is right on the money when he writes:

Napoleon Chagnon is a sadder story [than Jared Diamond], because he is not a pseudo-anthropologist, but an incompetent anthropologist.  Let me be clear about my use of the word “incompetent”.  His methods for collecting, analyzing and interpreting his data are outside the range of acceptable anthropological practices.  Yes, he saw the Yanomamo doing nasty things.  But when he concluded from his observations that the Yanomamo are innately and primordially “fierce”  he lost his anthropological credibility, because he had not demonstrated any such thing.   He has a right to his views, as creationists and racists have a right to theirs, but the evidence does not support the conclusion, which makes it scientifically incompetent.

It’s hard for me to claim to give an objective response to Sahlins’s decision to resign. The man was my thesis advisor. He was a guest at my wedding. So when I applaud his decision to leave NAS you can decide for yourself how you want to take it. In my opinion, NAS is losing a great scholar and scientist, and gaining the Ward Churchill of anthropology.

After all is said and done, the facts about Chagnon are straightforward: just because some of your enemies distrust science doesn’t mean you’re any good at it.And just because some people dislike your work for political reasons doesn’t mean every criticism of your work is invalid. In the struggle to create a healthy, empirical, and robust anthropology for the twenty-first century, NAS has chosen the wrong side.

Among the hazards Napoleon Chagnon encountered in the Venezuelan jungle were a jaguar that would have mauled him had it not become confused by his mosquito net and a 15-foot anaconda that lunged from a stream over which he bent to drink. There were also hairy black spiders, rats that clambered up and down his hammock ropes and a trio of Yanomami tribesmen who tried to smash his skull with an ax while he slept. (The men abandoned their plan when they realized that Chagnon, a light sleeper, kept a loaded shotgun within arm’s reach.) These are impressive adversaries — “Indiana Jones had nothing on me,” is how Chagnon puts it — but by far his most tenacious foes have been members of his own profession.

At 74, Chagnon may be this country’s best-known living anthropologist; he is certainly its most maligned. His monograph, “Yanomamö: The Fierce People,” which has sold nearly a million copies since it was first published in 1968, established him as a serious scientist in the swashbuckling mode — “I looked up and gasped when I saw a dozen burly, naked, filthy, hideous men staring at us down the shafts of their drawn arrows!” — but it also embroiled him in controversy.

I heard various takes on Chagnon throughout my anthropological training.  I read his book about the “Yanomamo” in some of my very first classes at community college, and then as the years went on I heard about the debates, the fights, the controversies.  When I first heard his name I had no idea he was such a controversial figure.  But then, a lot of thing[s] that I first heard about in my early anthropology courses became a bit more “complicated” along the way.  It’s interesting to me that this author calls Chagnon the best-known living anthropologist.  Maybe he is.  I guess it depends on who you ask though–and where you ask.  Anyway, this NY Times piece is an interesting overview of some of these histories, and it’s worth reading.  Read the rest here.

UPDATE 2/20/13: A lot of folks posted some great resources and links in the comment thread.  I thought I’d update the post and put them up here to make things a little more accessible.  As Jason Antrosio said, this story definitely needs some serious contextualization.  Let me know if you have other links/sources and I will add them here.

1. Elizabeth Povinelli’s review of Chagnon’s new book.

2. Response to the NY Times piece by AAA president Leith Mullings.

3. Jon Marks on Jared Diamond and Napoleon Chagnon.

4. Sociobalderdash, and the Yanomami? Part II by Ken Weiss.

5. Meet Joe Science by Jonathan Marks.

6. Marshall Sahlins on Chagnon’s research.

7. What the press is saying about Napoleon Chagnon (Louis Proyect)

8. The Weird Irony at the Heart of the Napoleon Chagnon Affair (John Horgan @Scientific American)