LAUSR

Sir, We are writing this response to the letter published in the Journal of Forensic Science by Carl N. Stephan and Ann H. Ross (1). While we welcome this letter for initiating a discussion regarding a code of practice, we have many serious concerns about the nature and substance of the letter. Below, we itemize some of these concerns. Our goal is to be substantive rather than exhaustive in addressing these issues. We find there is a general problem with the scope of the letter which is both too broad in its intended application and too limited in the participation of key stakeholders and the focus on forensic anthropology. Generally, codes of practice should be developed by consensus through peer-review and discussions that include all parties with a stake in the matter, rather than by dictate in a letter from two individuals, regardless of their reputation or experience, who are active in only one of the relevant disciplines. While we understand that the letter appeared in a forensic science journal, the focus on only forensic anthropology implies that codes of conduct should vary for the use of the same collection for research originating in different disciplines, and ignores the fact that methods in forensic anthropology are derived from and also applicable to bioarcheological contexts. Furthermore, although identified reference collections have been critically important in forensic anthropology and bioarcheology, these collections have been used and continue to be used in a number of other subdisciplines of anthropology such as paleopathology, as well as for biomedical and other research and training (e.g., (2–4); among others). The lack of consultation or even consideration of views of a wide range of stakeholders is highly problematic. This code of practice seems to be driven only for and by users of the collections and fails to address critical issues that vary across the globe and are relevant to a number of other stakeholders such as but not limited to: individual curators of collections; institutions that house the collections; government agencies and private foundations that may fund the amassing, curation and preservation of the collections; and local and regional views for the curation of human remains. Furthermore, regardless of care taken and proper protocol, use of a collection is necessarily the slow destruction of a collection. The code of practice proposed by Stephan and Rose does not address any of the ethical consideration inherent in a curator’s responsibilities for the perpetual care of human remains and to preserve the collection for future research, which may include prohibiting destructive methods and limiting access in general to specific types of research that is considered of value to the relevant local stakeholder. A code of practice should focus on minimum ethical and safety standards for developing, using, and preserving collections, and not just documenting their source properly. Related to the problems with scope is the issue of bias. While it is admirable to strive to be free of an ethnocentric approach in any science, simply stating that a code of practices for research is not prescribing or specifying an ethnocentric perspective, does not free it from bias. Furthermore, in this context the reality is that political, legal, social, economic, and religious views play a role in drafting any code involving human remains. Rather than striving for an unrealistic goal of being free from bias (ethnocentric or otherwise), a better approach is to solicit wide range of opinions from a range of scholars and experts, and including a wide range of stakeholders in drafting a code of practices. In addition, further ethnocentric bias is illustrated by the code’s excessive focus on accessioning cadavers for collection, without recognizing other sources, namely cemeteries, for human skeletons, and both their ethical and managerial issues. This is in spite of citing at least one paper about one such collection (5). There are several examples in Stephan and Ross’ proposed code of practices that appear to be ethnocentric and have nothing to do with a code of practice for research involving skeletal collections. For example, they state “Subsequently, while skeletal collections hold many benefits for research, it is equally vital to realize their sometimes-substantial limitations especially in population-specific contexts.” This type of language minimizes and misrepresents the bias introduced in the process of amassing any collection, and then necessarily places arbitrary and highly subjective limits on the types of research that can be pursued. These collections are not “osteological censuses” and are not representative of the living populations from which they are derived (2,6–8), and this is not a new idea. Over 75 years ago, Terry ((9): 435) noted that “at the outset a remark is in order to remind that the material of the dissection laboratory can hardly be taken as a sample of the living population from which it has been derived.” Furthermore, regardless of code, statements by Stephan and Ross reflect their own personal views of patterns of human variation with no citations to support their statement. There is a great deal of evidence that “population-specific” is a euphemism for race-specific and reflects neo-colonial approach to human variation that is situated in a history that is highly racial (10). There is a great deal of literature that illustrates the highly problematic nature of this approach where dominant groups directly or indirectly define the parameters of populations based on preconceived notions of human variation (11–15). More specific to the context in question, we have published a body of literature demonstrating that, whether it is referred to as “population-specific” or “race-specific,” this typological approach is highly problematic in forensic anthropology. For example, when estimating stature we have shown that a sample that includes Black females from the Terry Collection can work as well or better than Portuguese-specific equations when tested on a sample of Portuguese males in modern forensic contexts ((16); for additional examples specific to a forensic context, please see (2,6,10,17– 25)). Regardless of one’s views, unsubstantiated value-laden Received 25 Mar. 2019; accepted 24 April 2019.