Antemortem tooth loss as a biomarker of poverty: Dental evidence of "weathering" in a contemporary U.S. skeletal sample.

In societies where resources are unequally distributed, structural inequities can be physically embodied over lifetimes. Lived experiences including racism, sexism, classism, and poverty can lead to chronic stress that prematurely ages body systems. This study tests the hypothesis that members of structurally vulnerable groups will exhibit premature aging in the form of antemortem tooth loss (AMTL). Analyzing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and white skeletal donors from the University of Tennessee, we predict that individuals from structurally vulnerable groups will exhibit more AMTL than individuals with more social privilege. We find some evidence for increased AMTL in BIPOC individuals, but significantly more AMTL in low-socioeconomic-status white individuals than either BIPOC or high-SES white individuals. We maintain that high rates of AMTL provide evidence of embodied consequences of social policies and utilize the violence continuum to theorize the ways in which poverty and inequity are normalized in U.S. society.

Operationalizing the structural vulnerability profile within the medical examiner context.

The medicolegal death investigation process in the United States, historically focused on personal identification and determination of cause and manner of death, has evolved in recent decades to include space for advocacy centered around public health. Particularly, in the domain of forensic anthropology, practitioners have begun to incorporate a structural vulnerability perspective on human anatomical variation, with the goals of articulating the social determinants of ill health and early death and ultimately influencing public policy. This perspective has explanatory power far beyond the anthropological sphere. In this piece, we argue that biological and contextual indicators of structural vulnerability can be incorporated into medicolegal reporting with potentially powerful impacts on policy. We apply theoretical frameworks from medical anthropology, public health, and social epidemiology to the context of medical examiner casework, highlighting the recently proposed Structural Vulnerability Profile developed and explored in other articles in this special issue. We argue that: 1. Medicolegal case reporting provides a valuable opportunity to record a faithful accounting of structural inequities in the annals of death investigation, and 2. Existing reporting infrastructure could, with limited modifications, provide a powerful opportunity to inform State and Federal policy with medicolegal data, presented within a structural vulnerability framework.

Operationalizing a Structural Vulnerability Profile for forensic anthropology: Skeletal and dental biomarkers of embodied inequity.

Human societies create and maintain structures in which individuals and groups experience varying degrees of inequity and suffering that may be skeletally and dentally embodied. It is necessary to foreground these social and structural impacts for forensic anthropologists to eschew biologically deterministic interpretations of human variation and overly individualistic interpretations of health and disease. We thus propose a 'Structural Vulnerability Profile' (SVP), akin to the Structural Vulnerability Assessment Tool of medical anthropology [1], to be considered along with the traditional 'biological' profile estimated by forensic anthropologists. Assembling an SVP would involve examining and assessing skeletal/dental biomarkers indicative of embodied social inequity-the lived experiences of social marginalization that can get 'under the skin' to leave hard-tissue traces. Shifting our emphasis from presumably hereditary variation to focus on embodied social marginalization, the SVP will allow forensic anthropologists to sensitively reconstruct the lived experiences of the people we examine.

Metric forensic anthropology decisions: Reliability and biasability of sectioning-point-based sex estimates.

Subjective decisions make human cognitive processes more susceptible to bias and error. Specifically, research indicates that additional context biases forensic anthropologists' morphological analyses. To address whether metric analyses are also subject to bias, we conducted a pilot study in which 52 experienced osteologists measured a difficult-to-classify human femur, with or without additional contextual information. Using a metric sectioning-point sex-estimation method, participants provided a sex estimate for individual skeletal element(s) and, when given multiple elements, the combined skeletal assemblage. Control group participants (n = 24) measured only the femur. In addition to the femur, bias group participants (n = 28) either measured a female humerus and viewed a female-biasing photograph (n = 14) or measured a male humerus and viewed a male-biasing photograph (n = 14). We explored whether the experts in the different groups would differ in: (1) femoral measurements; (2) femoral sex-estimation conclusions; and (3) final sex-estimation conclusions for the skeletal assemblage. Although the femoral measurements and femoral sex estimates were comparable across groups, the overall sex estimates in the female-biased group were impacted by contextual information-differing from both the control and male-biased groups (p < 0.001). Our results demonstrate that cognitive bias can occur even in metric sex-estimation conclusions. Specifically, this occurred when the metric data and single-element sex estimates were synthesized into an overall estimate. Thus, our results suggest that metric methods are most vulnerable to bias when data are synthesized into an overall conclusion, highlighting the need for bias countermeasures and comprehensive statistical frameworks for synthesizing metric data to mitigate the effects of cognitive bias.

Objectivity is a myth that harms the practice and diversity of forensic science.

•Forensic science data are theory laden; pure scientific objectivity is a myth.•Upholding this myth marginalizes forensic scientists with subjective positionalities•Objectivity rhetoric is exclusive; ethical forensic science needs diverse perspectives.•Espousing objectivity prevents us from supporting the communities we serve.•Mitigated objectivity acknowledges implicit bias, constraining it via quality control.

Responding to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences vision, mission, and values statements: Comments, revisions, and proposed actions.

•We call for revisions to the current AAFS vision, mission, and values statements.•Truly aspirational statements will provide guiding principles for forensic scientists.•Revisions should meaningfully engage with issues of diversity and equity.•Our goal of pursuing justice should also extend to our practitioner community.•We envision AAFS committees of diverse membership making positive changes to the statements.

A hierarchy of expert performance as applied to forensic anthropology.

Due to their medicolegal repercussions, forensic anthropology conclusions must be reliable, consistent, and minimally compromised by bias. Yet, a synthetic analysis of the reliability and biasability of the discipline's methods has not yet been conducted. To do so, this study utilized Dror's (2016) hierarchy of expert performance (HEP), an eight-level model aimed at examining intra- and inter-expert reliability and biasability (the potential for cognitive bias) within the literature of forensic science disciplines. A systematic review of the forensic anthropology literature was conducted (1972-present), including papers published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Forensic Anthropology, Forensic Science International, and the Journal of Forensic Sciences and Anthropology Section abstracts published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the AAFS which matched keywords such as "forensic anthropology," "bias," "reliability," "cognition," "cognitive," or "error." The resulting forensic anthropology HEP showcases areas that have ample research and areas where more research can be conducted. Specifically, statistically significant increases in reliability (p < 0.001) and biasability (p < 0.001) publications were found since 2009 (publication of the NAS report). Extensive research examined the reliability of forensic anthropological observations and conclusions (n = 744 publications). However, minimal research investigated the biasability of forensic anthropological observations and conclusions (n = 20 publications). Notably, while several studies demonstrated the biasing effect of extraneous information on anthropological morphological assessments, there was no research into these effects on anthropological metric assessments. The findings revealed by the forensic anthropology HEP can help to guide future research, ultimately informing the development and refinement of best-practice standards for the discipline.

Validation of the Acetabulum As a Skeletal Indicator of Age at Death in Modern European-Americans.

Progressive changes in the acetabulum have been used in modern skeletal age estimation, but they have not been completely understood. If their age correlations are weakened by the influence of factors like physical activity and obesity, acetabular changes should not be used for age estimation. To investigate their utility for aging, the acetabular variables of Rissech et al. (2006) were analyzed in 409 modern European-Americans (Bass Collection, Tennessee). Correlation tests assessed potential associations between acetabular data, osteoarthritis scores (collected per Jurmain, 1990), and documented demographic information (age, body mass index [BMI], metabolic intensity of physical activities). Acetabular changes had statistically significant, positive correlations with osteoarthritis (p < 0.001 in most joints/regions) and age (p < 0.001), indicating their degenerative nature and relevance for age estimation. Acetabular changes showed no associations with BMI or metabolic values, suggesting resistance to obesity and activity effects. These results suggest that acetabular degeneration is a valid skeletal age-at-death indicator.

A comparison of three established age estimation methods on an adult Spanish sample.

Most current methods for adult skeletal age-at-death estimation are based on American samples comprising individuals of European and African ancestry. Our limited understanding of population variability hampers our efforts to apply these techniques to various skeletal populations around the world, especially in global forensic contexts. Further, documented skeletal samples are rare, limiting our ability to test our techniques. The objective of this paper is to test three pelvic macroscopic methods [(1) Suchey-Brooks; (2) Lovejoy; and (3) Buckberry and Chamberlain] on a documented modern Spanish sample. These methods were selected because they are popular among Spanish anthropologists and because they never have been tested in a Spanish sample. The study sample consists of 80 individuals (55 males and 25 females) of known sex and age from the Valladolid collection. Results indicate that in all three methods, levels of bias and inaccuracy increase with age. The Lovejoy method performs poorly (27%) compared with Suchey-Brooks (71%) and Buckberry and Chamberlain (86%). However, the levels of correlation between phases and chronological ages are low and comparable in the three methods (<0.395). The apparent accuracy of the Suchey-Brooks and Buckberry and Chamberlain methods is largely based on the broad width of the methods' estimated intervals. This study suggests that before systematic application of these three methodologies in Spanish populations, further statistical modeling and research into the covariance of chronological age with morphological change are necessary. Future methods should be developed specific to various world populations and should allow for both precision and flexibility in age estimation.