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The Fierce People. That's what anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon called the indigenous Yanomam Indians of Venezuela in his 1968 book Yanomam: The Fierce People. It's one of the best-selling anthropology texts of all time and is still in wide use.

In the 45 years since the book's release, Chagnon has remained a lightning rod for controversy about theory, method and ethics in anthropology. Chagnon's central conclusion is a stark one: chronic warfare and homicidal violence among the Yanomam should be understood, in large part, as a biologically ingrained behavior.

As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins explained in an essay from 2000, Chagnon's conclusions on homicide and reproductive success among the Yanomam attempt to "support the theory that violence has been progressively inscribed in our genes." Explaining human behavior in this way, by primary recourse to genetics instead of looking to a rich mix of cultural and biological factors, is considered by many anthropologists to be an inaccurate, impoverished view of human behavior.

Chagnon, who was elected last year to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and is a professor at the University of Missouri, has also been accused by some of directly harming the Yanomam themselves via ethical lapses in his research. (For details, see Sahlins' essay, plus this more recent report from indigenous-advocacy group Survival International).

The debates surrounding his work are burning brightly once again with the publication of Chagnon's memoir, Noble Savages. The book received lacerating reviews by anthropologists Elizabeth Povinelli in The New York Times and Rachel Newcomb in The Washington Post. Then, as reported by Inside Higher Ed on Monday, Sahlins resigned his membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Sahlins cited the Academy's "large moral and intellectual blunder" in electing Chagnon as one reason for his decision. (The other reason involves Sahlins' objection to collaborative projects between the NAS and the military, an issue that has nothing to do with Chagnon).

I know neither Sahlins nor Chagnon personally. But for a biological anthropologist like myself, these recent, dizzying and highly agitated events surrounding Chagnon and his work are important to try and understand.

This is no mere ego contest between two alpha-male primates of academic anthropology: instead it's a meaningful, if startlingly angry, discussion about the responsibility of scientists to the people they study and (the factor I will focus on here) the contribution of biology, particularly genetics, to understanding human behavior.

Chagnon has remarked to Inside Higher Ed that Sahlins is "anti-scientific," that is, unwilling to see that good science may lead to conclusions about inherited patterns of human behavior. Certainly, in taking this perspective, Chagnon has his supporters, including prominent anthropologists William Irons and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder. After all, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences!

But the opposing voices are adamant, and they say that Chagnon's science isn't good science. Anthropologist Jonathan Marks, in a blog post last week, called Chagnon "an incompetent anthropologist." Marks wrote:

Let me be clear about my use of the word "incompetent". Chagnon's methods for collecting, analyzing and interpreting his data are outside the range of acceptable anthropological practices. Yes, he saw the Yanomam doing nasty things. But when he concluded from his observations that the Yanomam are innately and primordially "fierce" he lost his anthropological credibility, because he had not demonstrated any such thing.