Warring anthropologists reflect larger cultural ri  John Leo
12/5/2000 12:00:00 AM - John Leo Most of us pay little attention
to squabbles in the academic world, but the dispute over
Napoleon Chagnon is one to watch. Apart from Margaret Mead,
Chagnon is probably the most prominent anthropologist of our
era, famed for his long work among the Yanomami Indians of the
Amazon rain forest in Brazil and Venezuela. Now journalist
Patrick Tierney is attempting to bring him down.  In a new book,
"Darkness in El Dorado," Tierney heavily implies that Chagnon
and a late colleague, geneticist James Neel, started a measles
epidemic among the Yanomami in a vaccination experiment that
killed hundreds of Indians. Tierney also charges that Chagnon
mischaracterized the Yanomami as warlike, staged fights for
filming and altered data to fit his theories.  When The New
Yorker printed a toned-down advance excerpt of the book, the
reaction was quick and explosive. Two of Chagnon's enemies, both
anthropologists, announced that Tierne