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The article presents information on the works of social scientists in a multidisciplinary HIV/AIDS prevention project in an African rural setting. The study examines the well-meaning activities of a group of researchers involved in what was broadly termed "a health promotion project" even though its ultimate objective was to reduce the spread of AIDS and the unintended consequences of those activities that unambiguously led to the aggravation of the situation they sought to improve. Focus is made on the decade of HIV/AIDS research in Chiawa, a village in Zambia, since 1990. The role of the development anthropologist seems not only improbable but also logically impossible. One cannot hope to improve something, unless one's presumption is to replace it with another that is better or superior to what was there to replace. Furthermore, the anthropologist's training is not designed to embrace the kind of ethnocentrisms entailed in replacing indigenous technologies, for example, or other cultural constructions that underpin the actions of the people studied.