The (Mis)appropriation of Biological Anthropology in Race Science and the Implications for Forensic Anthropology

Most biological anthropologists acknowledge that phenotypic human variation is distinct from human race. However, there is the potential for the research on human variation to be (mis)interpreted by the public as a reification of biological races. To explore this possible misuse, this study is a content analysis of articles (n = 1146) in the prominent race science journals Mankind Quarterly; The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies; and The Occidental Quarterly. The goal is to investigate how race science employs research in biological and forensic anthropology to justify arguments. Articles were evaluated according to country affiliation, discipline, data sets, racial/ethnic terminology, position on racial hierarchy, position on racial segregation and eugenics, focus of study, views of scientific community, and the average power index (PI). Additionally, specific examples of (mis)appropriation are highlighted. Though the primary discipline represented in these publications is psychology, biological anthropology maintains a presence. Skeletal and dental traits, genetics, and paleoanthropological data are used to argue for biological racial differences and taxonomic distinctions. The research of forensic ancestry estimation was regularly used to legitimize the concept of biological race. While the PIs of the articles are low, they are present on the internet and circulate within social media. The continued use of biological anthropology to reinforce racial essentialism should force practitioners to question the ethical implications of their research. Finally, we provide discussion regarding shiftsin methodology and terminology to address how biological and forensic anthropologists can rectify the damage this research may directly and indirectly cause.

Being transgender: human variation or disorder?

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On WEIRD Anthropologists and Their White Skeletons

Most forensic anthropologists and the populations they study are WEIRD—that is, Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. In their interventions into the WEIRD, Clancy and Davis (2019) contend that WEIRD is a euphemism for white and that it is the white, Western European–derived scientists and subjects that skew the predominating narrative of the human condition. While they demonstrate how biological anthropology can decenter the WEIRD, it is fruitful to extend their framework specifically to forensic anthropology. We argue that the scientific enterprise of forensic anthropology is unique in that: (1) it is touted as an objective tool that must operate within medicolegal systems, (2) it involves board certification and accreditation standards, and (3) it holds ancestry and race as core to its practice. In a bibliometric survey of journal articles over the past five years (n = 793), we find that up to 79% of authors originate from WEIRD contexts. In articles specifically studying ancestry, European-derived populations are included 88% of the time as a category for comparison to other groups, while only 12% do not include Europeans. Furthermore, 49% of articles unrelated to ancestry use white subjects solely or in part, reinforcing a historic tendency to measure all human variation against one particular norm. We also find that WEIRD articles receive significantly more recognition than non-WEIRD counterparts. In this reflexive and positional exercise, we hope to make visible how whiteness as WEIRDness informs the history, values, and practices of forensic anthropology on a global scale.

Terminology Used to Describe Human Variation in Forensic Anthropology

To understand the implications of the forensic anthropological practice of “ancestry” estimation, we explore terminology that has been employed in forensic anthropological research. The goal is to evaluate how such terms can often circulate within social contexts as a result, which may center forensic anthropologists as constituting “race” itself through analysis and categorization. This research evaluates terminology used in anthropological articles of the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 1972 and 2020 (n = 314). Terminology was placed into two categories: classifiers and descriptors. Classifiers were standardized into one of five options: “race,” “ancestry,” “population,” “ethnic,” or “other.” Descriptors included terms used to describe individuals within these classificatory systems. We also compared these terms to those in the NamUs database and the U.S. census. Our results found that the terms “ancestry” and “race” are often conflated and “ancestry” largely supplanted “race” in the 1990s without a similar change in research approach. The NamUs and census terminology are not the same as that used in forensic anthropological research; illustrating a disconnect in the terms used to identify the missing, unidentified, and in social contexts with those used in anthropological research. We provide histories of all of these terms and conclude with suggestions for how to use terminology in the future. It is important for forensic anthropologists to be cognizant of the terms they use in medicolegal contexts, publications, and in public and/or professional spaces. The continued use of misrepresentative and improper language further marginalizes groups and perpetuates oppression rooted in systemic racism.

Human variation in gingival inflammation

Oral commensal bacteria actively participate with gingival tissue to maintain healthy neutrophil surveillance and normal tissue and bone turnover processes. Disruption of this homeostatic host–bacteria relationship occurs during experimental gingivitis studies where it has been clearly established that increases in the bacterial burden increase gingival inflammation. Here, we show that experimental gingivitis resulted in three unique clinical inflammatory phenotypes (high, low, and slow) and reveal that interleukin-1β, a reported major gingivitis-associated inflammatory mediator, was not associated with clinical gingival inflammation in the slow response group. In addition, significantly higher levels of Streptococcus spp. were also unique to this group. The low clinical response group was characterized by low concentrations of host mediators, despite similar bacterial accumulation and compositional characteristics as the high clinical response group. Neutrophil and bone activation modulators were down-regulated in all response groups, revealing novel tissue and bone protective responses during gingival inflammation. These alterations in chemokine and microbial composition responses during experimental gingivitis reveal a previously uncharacterized variation in the human host response to a disruption in gingival homeostasis. Understanding this human variation in gingival inflammation may facilitate the identification of periodontitis-susceptible individuals. Overall, this study underscores the variability in host responses in the human population arising from variations in host immune profiles (low responders) and microbial community maturation (slow responders) that may impact clinical outcomes in terms of destructive inflammation.

Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism

One of the parameters forensic anthropologists have traditionally estimated is ancestry, which is used in the United States as a proxy for social race. Its use is controversial because the biological race concept was debunked by scientists decades ago. However, many forensic anthropologists contend, in part, that because social race categories used by law enforcement can be predicted by cranial variation, ancestry remains a necessary parameter for estimation. Here, we use content analysis of the Journal of Forensic Sciences for the period 2009–2019 to demonstrate the use of various nomenclature and resultant confusion in ancestry estimation studies, and as a mechanism to discuss how forensic anthropologists have eschewed a human variation approach to studying human morphological differences in favor of a simplistic and debunked typological one. Further, we employ modern geometric morphometric and spatial analysis methods on craniofacial coordinate anatomical landmarks from several Latin American samples to test the validity of applying the antiquated tri-continental approach to ancestry (i.e., African, Asian, European). Our results indicate groups are not patterned by the ancestry trifecta. These findings illustrate the benefit and necessity of embracing studies that employ population structure models to better understand human variation and the historical factors that have influenced it.

MaveRegistry: a collaboration platform for multiplexed assays of variant effect

Summary Multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVEs) are capable of experimentally testing all possible single nucleotide or amino acid variants in selected genomic regions, generating ‘variant effect maps’, which provide biochemical insight and functional evidence to enable more rapid and accurate clinical interpretation of human variation. Because the international community applying MAVE approaches is growing rapidly, we developed the online MaveRegistry platform to catalyze collaboration, reduce redundant efforts, allow stakeholders to nominate targets and enable tracking and sharing of progress on ongoing MAVE projects. Availability and implementation MaveRegistry service: https://registry.varianteffect.org. MaveRegistry source code: https://github.com/kvnkuang/maveregistry-front-end.