WATCH ON THE MEDIA.

The New York Times provided an update Sept. 16 on a case now before the New Mexico Supreme Court pitting two anthropologists over the work of Carlos Casteneda, whose books about self-discovery under the tutelage of a Yaqui Indian mystic drew millions of readers in the 1960s and 1970s.

"What began as a disagreement over the authenticity of research into peyote rituals has evolved into a take-no-prisoners legal battle between the two experts on the Huichol Indians of northern Mexico," wrote Simon Romero.

Jay Courtney Fikes, a professor of anthropology at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, wrote a book accusing Peter T. Furst, retired former chairman of the anthropology department at State University of New York, of helping Casteneda fabricate descriptions of Indian rituals involving peyote.

Furst saw advance galleys of the book and responded by warning a prospective U.S. publisher he would sue for defamation and calling Fikes's qualifications as an anthropologist into question. When that publisher rejected the book, Fikes arranged for it to be published in Canada in 1993 under the title Carlos Casteneda: Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties.

Furst kept up his criticism, writing the director of a proposed program at the University of New Mexico not to hire Fikes because he was a "sloppy researcher" and "lousy anthropologist."

Fikes never got the job and sued Furst for defamation, claiming lost income of $45,000 plus unspecified damages for loss of professional opportunities in the United States.

"What's disgusting is that I've been a victim of Fikes all these years and my victimizer turns around and sues me," Romero quoted Furst as responding.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit, but an appellate court revived it and the state Supreme Court has agreed to review the decision.