Even among scientists who accepted the Gombe data, there were those who believed that it had been a mistake to publish the facts; they thought that I should play down the aggressiveness whenever possible. Why this strong resistance? It was my first experience with the politics of science, the pressure to publish or not to publish for political, religious, or social reasons. One colleague said, after I had told him about the violence among the chimps, “You should never publish this because it will give irresponsible scientists and writers the data they need to ‘prove’ that our human tendency to
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