The 2000 book Darkness in El Dorado and the 2010 documentary film Secrets of the Tribe included allegations that Lizot had traded goods for sexual favours from young boys.
[4] Lizot was a student and protégé of Claude Levi-Strauss, who invited him to participate in medical anthropology research of the Yanomami people in Venezuela.
[5] Writing in American Ethnologist, Lizot dismissed Chagnon's thesis that unokai, Yanomami men who have murdered, had greater reproductive success, arguing that systematic bias on Chagnon's part led him to omit the fact that unokai is a category broader than just men who have murdered.
Violence is only sporadic; it never dominates social life for any length of time, and long peaceful moments can separate two explosions.
He stressed the weakness of the Yanomami political system and attributed violent acts in part to illicit sexual relations.
[9] He donated his field notes and documents pertaining to the Yanomami to the Social Anthropology Laboratory of the Collège de France in 2004.
[9] The 2000 book Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney described a series of alleged ethical breaches by anthropologists studying the Yanomami, including those of Chagnon, Kenneth Good, and Lizot.
[5] According to Tierney, Lizot traded goods made from steel for sexual favours from young men— "two sex acts for a machete, six for a shotgun".
[7] Later independent investigations, including by the American Anthropological Association, showed that some of Tierney's allegations were exaggerated, false or defamatory, but did not call into question the facts attributed to Lizot.
[15] The 2010 documentary film Secrets of the Tribe by José Padilha revisited the topic and included interviews with men who had sexual encounters with Lizot.