Study highlights need to replace 'ancestry' in forensics with something more accurate.

 

Sofie Blazejczak

Mr Ippolito

10/29/2021

Current events #6 (2nd writeup)

 

Study highlights need to replace 'ancestry' in forensics with something more accurate.

September 15, 2021. North Carolina State University

 

As our society progresses and diversifies the human population, it becomes more important to ensure that anthropology forensic is being updated as well, maximizing the potential and accuracy of the field. Forensic anthropology relates the human race with bone structure, and follows with the categories Asian, European, and African. Furthermore, inconsistent terminology used in the forensic science field (for example, different words to describe a race) allows for confusion, misunderstanding and missure within the discipline of categorizing by historical ancestry. Using a default such as race can be widely misleading in the context of forensic science. Population affinity (in the context of forensic anthropology) is determined by the skeletal characteristics associated with groups of people. Bone structure can represent many other aspects of ancestry that are beyond, or even contradicts one’s appearance of race. It is important that forensic science not only analyzes historical ancestry, but reflects modern change and faults in the far too simple terms and categories.

This is a significant point to be made in the science and justice system as a whole; researchers who evaluated nine data sets on data of 397 people from South America (Cuba Guatemala, Panama, Peru…) found that groups that are geographically close to each other aren't always similar to one another. For example, Panama and Colombia, which share a border, have surprising differences in their skeletal characteristics. This study on ancestry and race is significantly important in forensics science because it works to take steps towards reducing racism in the field , and prevents the common fault of marginalizing specific groups of people. As a field, it is important that there is an emphasis on thinking about physical markers in the context of population affinity, to specifically help understand the origins of unidentified remains - it is important that the forensic field recognize this so that they don’t contribute to the structural inequities and racism. Contemporary remains reflect cultural influence on the different origins of the world.

            I found that this article was a little confusing to follow along with, and would have preferred a more direct connection of generalizing terms and how they can contribute to faults and inequities such as racism in the field. I think again, there could have been greater elaboration on how these errors on analyzing origin contribute to the problem or targeted marginalized populations, as it was only brushed upon. Conclusively, I would have liked to learn more about specific examples of how significant faults in inconsistent and too general terms have impacted the justice system or thoroughness of a crime case, in regards to forensic science