Facts, Lies, and Lawsuits

Well, Jared Diamond apparently forgot to do the whole "fact check" thing in his latest article. Well, that's not exactly true...he just made stuff up out of thin air.

http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-149.php

Diamond of course uses generalizations, and some poor anthropology in his books, but that's a world of difference away from this situation. I'm not the most rabid anti-Diamond anthropologist you'll ever meet (or at least I wasn't until I read this), public anthropology definitely has a place and I don't think that "going public" needs to be a giant stain. After all, what's the point of only writing to your peers, echo chambers don't help anyone.

Anthropology certainly needs public faces. For the primatologists Jane Goodall has served this function well (despite criticisms of some of her work she more or less stands the test of legitimacy). Archaeologists have Indiana Jones (and you can't get much better P.R. than Raiders and Crusade, right?) and the various talking heads on the History Channel (Zahi Hawass and the likes). Poor culture people don't really have anyone...someone should step up and bite the bullet (the bullet being academic ire) and not, oh you know, MAKE SHIT UP.

It doesn't help the profession when a public figure is caught doing this, and even more so when the lies are nothing more than typical "wild savage" stories packaged in the nice respected pages of the New Yorker. Violence certainly is a fact of life (in any culture, past/present or western/nonwestern) and I'm not advocating a Noble Savage mindset here. However at the end of the article you see:

The untruths in The New Yorker article by Dr. Jared Diamond are already poisoning the future of indigenous peoples. Mako John Kuwimb, Handa clansman in PNG and a PhD candidate in law living in Queensland, Australia, must publish a peer-reviewed paper before being able to finalize his degree after four years of study. The referee notes for Kuwimb cites Diamond's article as evidence of violence of Handa in SH PNG [Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea]. The anonymous reviewer suggests that Kuwimb is somehow not honest about his area's violence (" the actual circumstances of Papua New Guinea today" pg.3 ) and uses Diamond's article to support this assertion. He/she writes: "The author comes from Handa village (the subject of an essay by Jared Diamond in the New Yorker, 21 April 2008), not far from the production facilities in the oil fields of Southern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea (not discussed)." (pg.4) The key words are "not discussed."

He/she goes on to further suggest the fact of the violence of the Handa area (that Kuwimb should know about and should have mentioned) in their conclusion: "The paper neither mentions the conflicts of local origin that have resulted in the rise of a gun culture, failed elections, the destruction of most social services, and the imposition of various States of Emergency over the last decade, nor the local political salve that was apparently agreed to in 2008 by the national government and the Southern Highlands oil and gas owners – to form a new Hela Province in 2010. The Southern Highlands has massive social and political problems, and so will Hela Province, but few can be blamed on legislative drafting dating back 120 years."

In other words, the only evidence the reviewer offers for this assertion of violence in the Handa area (that he/she suggests Kuwimb should have mentioned as he is a Handa!) is the Diamond article that, in fact, and unbeknownst to the reviewer, is full of untruths and libels.

Why would Kuwimb discuss an un-peer-reviewed article in The New Yorker magazine in the first place? He certainly would not mention it as it is full of objective factual inaccuracies and libelous assertions. And yet there it is, cited in the peer review simply because Dr. Diamond's and The New Yorker's prestige is powerful—and, therefore, extremely dangerous when wrong.