He also wrote that the researchers had exacerbated a measles epidemic among the Native Americans,[1] and that Jacques Lizot and Kenneth Good committed acts of sexual impropriety with Yanomamo.

Tierney's book was condemned by a number of academic researchers and professional associations, including the National Academy of Sciences,[13] and the American Society of Human Genetics.

It said in its preliminary report that the "book appears to be deliberately fraudulent", and that "Patrick Tierney has misconstrued or misrepresented his primary sources to a considerable degree in an effort to support his allegations."

"[5] Alice Dreger, a historian of medicine and science and an outsider to the debate, concluded after a year of research that Tierney's claims about Chagnon and Neel were false.

The association admitted that "in the course of its investigation, in its publications, in the venues of its national meetings and its web site, [the AAA] condoned a culture of accusation and allowed serious but unevaluated charges to be posted on its website and expressed in its newsletter and annual meetings" and that its "report has damaged the reputations of its targets, distracted public attention from the real sources of the Yanomamo tragedy and misleadingly suggested that anthropologists are responsible for Yanomamo suffering".

[19] According to an investigation done at Dreger's behest, Tierney had no training or employment in anthropology or journalism, but had traveled through South America under a false identity, cheated gold buyers, entered Yanomamo territory without legal permission, carried poisonous mercury into the rainforest, met with murderers, and may have gotten a man killed.