Subjective with a capital S? Issues of objectivity in forensic anthropology

A hierarchy of expert performance as applied to forensic anthropology

“…This focus on reliability versus biasability may also be, in part, a by-product of the ontological and theoretical underpinnings of many scientists. Like other forensic scientists, forensic anthropologists have historically prided themselves on their objectivity, focusing primarily on the objects of their research (i.e., skeletal material) while deprioritizing human observer effects on the decision-making process [3,48]. This positivist theoretical positionthat scientists can be purely objective-allows for concepts like reliability to be considered a methodological characteristic rather than an observer characteristic, with error studies focusing on the reliability of a particular method, rather than investigating how reliable forensic anthropologists are at using a particular method.…”

“…Because of this theoretical shift, a door has been opened not only for the intra-and inter-expert reliability studies that dominated the forensic anthropological literature, but also for investigations into the biasability of forensic anthropological analyses (e.g., [23,29]). This shift away from a positivist approach brings the forensic sciences into closer compliance with cultural anthropology, archaeology, and the other social sciences, which have long acknowledged the inherent human subjectivities of science and attempted to mitigate them [47,48,53,[68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]. Taking much of their theoretical framework from the social sciences, forensic anthropologists are well positioned to play a greater leadership role in bringing to light the subjective factors that can bias forensic analyses.…”

“…Taking much of their theoretical framework from the social sciences, forensic anthropologists are well positioned to play a greater leadership role in bringing to light the subjective factors that can bias forensic analyses. It is hoped that forensic anthropology's recent shift toward a holistic-anthropological-biocultural-approach will provide a more human-centered context that encourages such self-reflexive research (see [48,[79][80][81]).…”

“…While the current study follows the convention of third‐person scientific writing, it is recommended that forensic anthropologists consider authoring first‐person pieces in the future, as this enables the acknowledgment of their agency as study designers and interpreters of data. At best, ignoring science's inherently subjective side may be perceived as naive; at worst, it may have very real impacts on medicolegal processes, if it leads to inaccurate portrayals of forensic science capabilities in the courtroom context [48,54].…”

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

“…In order for scientific analyses to be considered reliable in a court of law, observations and conclusions must be consistent (within and between experts) and minimally compromised by bias. Yet, as a process undertaken by human actors, scientific knowledge production can never be purely objective [3][4][5]. Despite the methodological focus of forensic and other applied sciences, methods-and the data that result-are themselves theory-laden [6][7][8].…”