230 Hum Nat (2011) 22:225–246 So, to begin a sampling of what I personally uncovered: On page 60 of Darkness, in writing of the key 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomamö, Tierney writes, “The vaccinators were Napoleon Chagnon and a respected Venezuelan doctor named Marcel Roche” (2001:60). Reading this in my work, I quickly recalled that Chagnon had told me in interviews he did not do vaccinations (Chagnon 2009). This is a non- trivial point since Tierney had claimed, though erroneously, that Yanomamö were seriously harmed—even killed—by a vaccine that was outdated and contraindicated. So I was surprised to see that Tierney’s citation for the claim that Chagnon was vaccinating was page 421 of the Neel et al. article on the epidemic, because I knew that was an article Chagnon himself had co-authored (Neel et al. 1970). How could Chagnon co-author a claim that he vaccinated in 1968 and then turn around and tell me he didn’t? In preparation for calling Chagnon to ask him to explain the discrepancy, I pulled the article cited. There is indeed a page 421 in the article, but that’s as far as the truth of the citation goes. In fact, nowhere in the article is any single vaccinator named. As I and others have found, this is typical of Tierney’s meticulous-appearing, copious citations. And his citations are, of course, how he gained such legitimacy. When Tierney was interviewed in late 2000 on Chicago Public Radio, interviewer Victoria Lautman gushed, There are 60 pages just of footnotes supporting Tierney’s incendiary main point[s], namely that the Brazilian Yanomamö Indians were hideously exploited, that a lethal 1968 measles epidemic was spread by a dangerous vaccine, that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission used the Yanomamö as a control group without their knowledge, and, most important, that all of these shocking abuses were perpetrated by two of the most famous and respected members of the anthropological community (sic; Lautman 2000). Yet—like the example I just provided—many of Tierney’s hundreds of citations lead nowhere. Others essentially say the opposite of what is claimed. Lautman’s uncritical swallowing of hook, line, and sinker indicates that Tierney’s story represented what journalists call “too good to check.” In the current media market, reporters are rewarded for primacy and speed, not for accuracy. People like Tierney can thus get far with a lot of untruths if their story is especially juicy. But it is worth noting that, had Sponsel and Turner and the AAA leadership bothered to pause and check—had they elected to act like scholars and not like mere reporters— the journalists promoting Tierney’s work might have soon realized how wrong it was, and Tierney’s book might not have reached the point of being named a finalist for the National Book Award. Let us consider another historically very important example of misrepresentation. On the first page of his book’s Acknowledgments, Tierney writes, “I am especially indebted to Leda Martins. . . . Leda’s dossier on Napoleon Chagnon was an important resource for my research” (Tierney 2001:xvii) The dossier to which Tierney is here referring was used for years before Darkness to try to stop Chagnon from obtaining further research permits to do his fieldwork. The dossier—copies of which I obtained from Chagnon and Martins—reads rather like a “coming attractions” synopsis of Darkness, so precisely does it presage the wild claims of the book.