LAUSR

Dear editor, In opening, we want to thank Goldstein et al. [1] and acknowledge their hard work and dedication to the practice of forensic anthropology and to their work identifying unknown remains. We agree wholeheartedly that there is a long-standing need for innovative and collaborative approaches to unidentified, cold-case investigations and their article is an important contribution to that literature [2–6]. However, we believe there are overarching legal and administrative issues that must be considered, and that the solution proposed in their manuscript for how academic institutions can “act as long term stewards of the unidentified” [1], omits any discussion of the critical failures of the overarching medicolegal authorities involved and the need for rigorous quality assurance protocols within academic laboratories interested in such an engaged level of involvement in the medicolegal system. As Goldstein et al. [1] and others have pointed out, unidentified and missing persons cases in the US are a humanitarian crisis, sometimes referred to as a “silent mass disaster” [7]. We fully agree that in many circumstances unidentified individuals represent a burden on the medicolegal authority, which for them is unfortunately most easily handled via cremation or statefunded burial, and which may or may not be documented in a way that allows for later exhumation and re-analysis [8]. We argue that the primary issues discussed by Goldstein and colleagues are the result of a lack of sufficient resources to the medicolegal death investigation system to properly retain evidence (i.e. human remains) and to thoroughly (re)investigate unidentified “cold” cases. The medicolegal death investigation system in the US is grossly underfunded [9–11]. This lack of appropriate resources results in numerous negative outcomes, including non-competitive pay [12,13], overwork, burnout [14–16], and insufficient time to investigate active and cold cases [17–19]. The solution proposed by Goldstein et al. [1] is essentially that the failings of the medicolegal death investigation system become the responsibility of academic forensic anthropology programmes. Forensic anthropologists in academic and consulting roles do frequently find themselves deeply involved in the difficulties of medicolegal authorities maintaining proper curation and safeguarding of skeletal evidence, case data, and records of “forgotten” forensic cases. However, when anthropologists reflexively absorb the roles and responsibilities of medicolegal agencies who are legally mandated and authorized to carry out these duties, the inherent problems within the overarching system are frequently not considered or thoroughly addressed. We believe the situation outlined by Goldstein and colleagues is a familiar one to anthropologists throughout the US and that at the very least, the approach outlined in their paper should be part of a significant effort to establish the formal responsibilities of each submitting agency (if determinable) and the curating institution in accordance with local, state, and federal laws. Goldstein and colleagues note that prior to establishing their current case file documentation procedures, their own laboratory had inconsistent numbering, missing recovery reports, missing casefile information, incomplete data collection sheets (i.e. analytical notes), inconsistent DNA collection, inconsistent submission to NamUS, and in some cases, total loss of case context [1]. While these circumstances are largely outside of the control of the current anthropologist(s) trying to improve case management, these examples are all serious quality assurance failures and unfortunately are not uncommon problems plaguing many unidentified remains cases in the US. Goldstein et al. [1] propose a model for academic forensic anthropology programmes to follow should they want to accept unidentified forensic cases for long-term curation on behalf of a medicolegal authority in order to address these issues. The justification for this proposition is that academic curation of unidentified remains is “preferable” to the alternative of “cremation or inconsistently documented burials, both of which may severely limit the potential avenues for a positive identification” [1]. The authors note that longterm curation of forensic cases at academic institutions presents a number of challenges and that “rather than accepting cases for long-term storage without hesitation, academic institutions should consider whether accepting cases is ethical based on the availability of