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Tierney's first book, The Highest Altar: The Story of Human Sacrifice, was published in 1989. Clarebooks.co.uk Online Used Books describes it thus: "In 1983 Patrick Tierney went to Peru on an assignment to cover the autopsy of a well preserved five-hundred year old mummy. It was discovered that the child had been buried alive, the victim of human sacrifice. . . . [Tierney] went on to discover that this ancient ritual is apparently still being practiced and tells of his attempts to track down these stories in order to discover the motives behind sacrifice, the motives of the shamans and brujos who perform it." The book is now out of print. But according to Tierney's biographical information, it has been the subject of a National Geographic documentary.

Tierney spent eleven years researching and writing Darkness in El Dorado. He started out investigating the disruptive impact gold mining and gold miners were having on the Amazonian region, including on the Yanomami. At some point in this research he turned his attention to the scientists and journalists who have worked among the Yanomami. His gives an account of his research in an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

I originally went there [to the Amazon] just documenting the mayhem that was going on . . . and trying to understand what was happening and perhaps alert people as to what can be done to help them. But as that evolved, my own participation changed. . . . It just didn't seem to be an adequate response to document people's deaths in the middle of these kinds of circumstances. . . . [The story about Neel and Chagnon] wasn't the story I was looking for initially, but it's what I came up with. . . . And what seemed to me to be the real story is that these people [the Yanomami] have been used to fulfill fantasies, scientific paradigms and preconceptions. And they've been used in ways that have been extremely harmful to them. (Srikameswaran 2000)

Tierney makes a considerable effort to give Darkness in El Dorado the trappings of academic scholarship. The book contains more than 1,590 footnotes; the bibliography contains more than 250 books. The question, however, is whether Tierney's years of research and voluminous citations add up to a credible work. Many suggest that his supporting data are stronger for his case against Chagnon than for his case against Neel. Regarding his claim that Neel helped make the 1968 measles epidemic worse through his actions, the overwhelming consensus is that Tierney is wrong.

To understand the media storm surrounding Darkness in El Dorado, readers should take note of how Tierney's publisher publicized it. A statement inside the book's dust jacket (in the hardcover edition) reads in all capitals: "One of the most harrowing books about anthropology to appear in decades. Darkness in El Dorado is a brilliant work of investigation that chronicles the history of Western exploitation of the Yanomami Indians." And a CNN.com "Book News" report, dated October 2, 2000, notes, the "publisher W. W. Norton . . . is billing the book as '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 addition to James Neel, Napoleon Chagnon, and Patrick Tierney, there are three minor characters and one religious group that should be noted here because they are sometimes referred to in the controversy.

Marcel Roche is a Venezuelan doctor. As part of his goiter research, he administered to Yanomami small doses of radioactive iodine in 1958, 1962, and 1968 to measure their iodine metabolism. Apparently none of the Yanomami tested suffered from goiter problems, nor have Yanomami in general suffered from the disease. The Yanomami were simply used as a control study to enhance Roche's understanding of the disease. Most people agree that Roche never asked for what is today termed informed consent—permission from subjects to conduct research on them.

Jacques Lizot is a prominent French anthropologist who lived among the Yanomami for more than twenty years. He is highly critical of Chagnon's writings. Two points tend to be repeatedly asserted about Lizot's time in the field: that he was a strong public defender of Yanomami rights and that he had homosexual relations with a number of Yanomami boys. Related to these sexual relations, Tierney writes: "Lizot probably distributed more clothes and shotguns than any other individual among the Yanomami" (2000:141). And: "Whatever homosexual practices the Yanomami had prior to Lizot's arrival, shotgun-driven prostitution is nothing to brag about in their culture" (2000:137). Lizot has written two books on the Yanomami: The Yanomami in the Face of Ethnocide (1976) and Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest (1985).

Ken Good was a doctoral student of Chagnon's who had a falling-out with him after they spent time together in the field. (He ultimately got his doctorate working with Marvin Harris, a critic of Chagnon.) Good spent twelve years among the Yanomami and married a Yanomami (Yarima), from whom he is now divorced. He has written about his experiences in Into the Heart: One Man's Pursuit of Love and Knowledge among the Yanomama (1991). Building on what Lizot wrote, Good observes, "Chagnon made . . . [the Yanomama (or Yanomami)] out to be warring, fighting, belligerent people. . . . That may be his image of the Yanomama; it's certainly not mine" (1991:175).

The Catholic Salesian missionaries have had a prominent presence in Yanomami territory for decades. Early in the twentieth century, Venezuela legally granted the Salesian missionaries responsibility for educating the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazonas region (which includes the Yanomami). That responsibility continues today. Both Chagnon and Lizot have come into conflict with the Salesians. While they have had positive things to say about the missionaries, both have been highly critical as well. One outside observer labeled Chagnon's conflict with the Salesians a "turf war" over who would control research among the Yanomami (Salamone 1996:4). (Chagnon views the Salesians as partly to blame for his being officially barred from studying the Yanomami in Venezuela.)