Study: Let’s Replace ‘Ancestry’ in Forensics With Something More AccuratePosted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive on 2021-07-15 18:52Z by Steven |
Study: Let’s Replace ‘Ancestry’ in Forensics With Something More Accurate
North Carolina State University News
Raleigh, North Carolina
2021-07-14
Matt Shipman, Research Communications Lead
A new study finds forensics researchers use terms related to ancestry and race in inconsistent ways, and calls for the discipline to adopt a new approach to better account for both the fluidity of populations and how historical events have shaped our skeletal characteristics.
“Forensic anthropology is a science, and we need to use terms consistently,” says Ann Ross, corresponding author of the study and a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. “Our study both highlights our discipline’s challenges in discussing issues of ancestral origin consistently, and suggests that focusing on population affinity would be a way forward.”
Race is a social construct – there’s no scientific basis for it. Population affinity, in the context of forensic anthropology, is determined by the skeletal characteristics associated with groups of people. Those characteristics are shaped by historic events and forces such as gene flow, migration, and so on. What’s more, these population groups can be very fluid…
Read the entire news release here.