I feel your eyes burning
Down to my bones
But I see the truth now
A little bit more alone
I run through the trees
As fast as I can
And I fall to my knees
And I find a place to land
Whisper in the moonlight
Stopping at my feet
See into the shadows
Taking over me
Anybody need an answer?
Good evening, people of the Bone Club.
We're coming to you live from Baltimore
and the American Academy of Forensic Science Conference.
I'm here with you with Stephanie.
Hey, everyone.
And a whole bunch of friends we've gathered.
Hello.
Yes.
You all want to go ahead and introduce yourselves.
Sure, I can start.
Hi, my name is Taylor Flaherty.
I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
And I specialize specifically in biocultural forensic anthropology.
I'm Thomas Delgado.
I'm a...
Wow.
Who am I?
I am a doctoral student at the University of Utah.
I focus on the isotopic analysis of human tissues
and structural vulnerability in marginalized populations.
Hello, I am Khalil Mahul.
I am a teacher here as in the lecture of forensic anthropology
in the American University of Science and Technology.
My research focus is about human-born remakes.
My name is Skylar.
I am currently a PhD student at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
My PhD topic covers the missing and deceased migration crisis
in the Mediterranean and specifically how the lack of state accountability
impacts the search process.
Hi, my name is Hannah Carson.
I'm a PhD student at the University of Montana.
My research focuses more on mining skeletal and molecular techniques
on ancient remains, but my background is mostly in forensic anthropology,
so that's my passion.
I guess that's me.
I'm Sam Blatt.
I'm an associate professor at Idaho State University.
And I dabble in forensics and bioarchaeology in forensic world.
I do novel identification and biocultural practices.
I'm a professor at the University of Montana.
I do research on different species of animals,
but I also love teeth and really old bones.
I travel around getting that whenever I can also.
You can keep the teeth.
No, I'm totally cool.
You have that teeth.
You don't want to deal with them.
I am your girl.
Third Mollers.
I'll take it.
I'll be in Idaho soon.
conversation about AFS and kind of what's going on at the conference is talk about the location.
We are, as Ashley said, we're in Baltimore. How'd everyone feel about Baltimore this week?
I know for myself coming to Hawaii, I was frozen. So I am so cold.
I mean, I'll say that to me from Idaho, it's still very cold.
Yeah, yeah. So it's freezing.
We didn't even get the snow we were promised. So that's a little bit.
We got some flakes.
I'm in Salt Lake. I'm in the snow.
I mean, since I've been here on Saturday, it's snowed like, I think it was close to two feet in Montana since I've been here.
So I'm not missing that.
Well, I know the big thing about this year's AFS was that every year there's a theme that kind of helps focus what research gets presented.
And this year's theme was about technology and AI. And I know there are a lot of really good presentations on all of that.
There's definitely some people here within this podcast that have even presented on it.
So if any of you all want to like briefly talk about what you thought about a topic and yeah, whatever.
You know, yeah, it talks about AI. So yeah, this year's theme was something, something technology.
A tool for something or tyranny.
Or tyranny.
Like there's a something or tyranny.
Tools or tyranny.
Yeah. Anyway, but the theme was technology and how do we interact with technology and our relationships and why.
Transformation.
You only remember the tyranny. That's the important part of this discussion.
I love transformer neural networks. They're very cool.
So yeah, so the theme I thought was very interesting and particularly relevant. You know, forensic anthropologists have been integrating artificial intelligence technologies into their research for the better part of a decade.
But we haven't yet started really critically examining our relationships with these techniques, the ethics, the bioethics and the politics that come alongside of them.
And also understanding them at a higher than anthropology, but still semi rudimentary computer science level. So we can make these really critical decisions are actually utilizing them and presenting novel research with them.
So I love the theme. Myself and Taylor Clowherty both organized a symposium that centered around how we use artificial intelligence and forensic anthropology, focusing specifically on methodological applications.
So this is how we do the work. This is clear steps to how we did it, and how can we make this reproducible accessible and fair across the wider, wider field.
Yeah, and I think Ashley said something really good earlier, he said something really good about the symposium, if you wanted to repeat it.
Well, it depends on what the thing was, I've said a lot about this. I thought it was very important. I think it is the direction of where forensic anthropology is going.
I think it's the direction of where forensic science as a overarching field is going.
But I do have reservations and questions I asked Thomas this yesterday during the symposium and I'll pose it to you again for everybody to see this thing and I want everybody to jump in on this they can.
When we look at what we've done, I'll touch it this way.
So, years ago I wrote a paper on standardization osteometrics, and I noted that in a list of osteometric measurements.
Our field our study couldn't get 80% on any one.
It was all 80% or well not even 80% or below, and it was just, we couldn't get that 80% threshold.
So, those are then replicated in database site, or does you have that same replication in any sort of measurements out there. If you have that error, either in databases or in user input within AI.
And AI would replicate that error in the future, or in magnifying, or can it serve as a corrective function and say hey wait a second.
This just seems like it might be off you need to fix this. I mean that was something that really sparked the discussion for planning the symposium.
You know I came to Thomas as a friend and a colleague who knows a lot about AI computers and I said, have some thoughts.
I have some questions. A lot of thoughts. And the biggest thing is that we have to remember that the bias that we have in ourselves and in our samples then get to put into these algorithms right.
I do think that we have to be cautious about what data we apply what populations we apply data to, and things like that so that we cannot have our biases reflected in these computer methods right.
At the same time, it comes with its own ethics that we have to consider. And so that's fine too.
I had lots of opinions yesterday on questions, similar to yours on Ashley on why or how we most ethically implement these tools.
And I do think there's a risk and I do think we need to go forward and see how we can best remove our bias as much as possible from our data collection and from our methods that we're building.
Can we remove our biases? Can even using a computer algorithm, even using machine learning and neural networks and things like that.
Can we ultimately, at the end result, remove our biases?
Yeah, you know I will say, I would correct myself. Yeah, I don't think we can remove it fully.
I don't think we can. I think even things like if you've ever seen the very basic example of Googling different types of professional attire for different like cultural groups of people, the bias is so built into that, where if you look at like professional
attire for black women, their natural hair very infrequently shows up in a Google images survey. And so we are seeing our biases reflected in these and so I guess you're absolutely correct. I wouldn't say we remove it. We have to see how we can accommodate it and how we can challenge it.
And I think that also just like comes down to, can the field even agree on what's an okay bias? Because bias isn't necessarily inherently negative, but as a field we tend to not even agree on what's okay.
Like what types of maybe sample bias is good for, you know, a certain study or what is actually negatively affecting how we're implementing this in a broader spectrum. And there doesn't seem to be consensus. So I think that before I know for myself going into this
like this conference, I was cautiously optimistic, I guess, because in my job, don't really use the technology in that same way. I feel like we're a little stuck in a little bit older school just because of, you know, who we're working with and what populations
we're trying to identify. And so the methods somewhat work and so they're kind of not changing it too, too much. And so I was just like, how, if we can't even agree as a field, what's okay, as far as what standard and what's willing, like what we're willing to have in our science, how are we going to progress forward with technologies and AIs and other things like that.
And so we can't agree on how to do an age assessment by itself, using that for that, that's what we have already. So, editor.
And then I guess for me just to go back because I have a lot of thoughts on that but I do want to address your first question as well with it, Ashley.
Just to reiterate what I said in this symposium, I think that we have to take a critical look at how we interact with data and how we interact with this observer error that we see throughout our measurements. Hey, I will not correctively look for that.
I guess I shouldn't say that. Could you code it, could you develop a tool that does it? Yes. Do I think it would be really useful and applicable to what we do? No, because you need to be correcting that error on the back end instead of just saying there is error here.
And I think I saw a lot of really good posters and presentations these last couple days about measuring inter and intra observer error and how we approach most of our biological assessment techniques. So I think right now we're having some of these really critical conversations.
AI is not going to be able to learn to fix our problems for us. That has to be fixed in the data and how we handle the data.
I don't think we should imagine that it could do that either. I agree.
Then we're, we're, you're the critical thinkers.
We need to maintain that level as well as we can put things in the black box and expect, or now this is correct. Like the validation of AI needs to continue. Yes. And not a selfish level. I'm not trying to work myself out of a job.
Well, I think that was a big takeaway yesterday, right? A multiple presenter said AI is not here to take our jobs. It's not at the level of we have to be concerned about fixing our own error via these methods.
But to be a contrarian, and I believe Skylar, you were at the talk today. I believe you were there. There was a talk this afternoon about using AI programs such as chat, GBT, and DOC3, where you can enter into the program, a three dimensional photograph,
a three dimensional image, and ask it to do a, in this case, a sex and age assessment and would it give you an accurate result with reasonings behind it.
And their result was yes, only they used two images. I have a severe problem with an N of two. Yeah. But that seems to be just me. But I also have a problem with the simplicity of just that. Yes.
And I think that got really well addressed by Dr. Carolyn Isaacs, who was a presenter at our symposium. She's a professor at Michigan State University. And I think she did a really good job at showing that actually no.
It's like we can feed it all chat GBT, these large language models, these chess, radio graphs, anything more than post mortem comparison and say, can you do it. And it might do it. Well, yeah. But if you ask for real technical reasoning, it does not and not provide that.
Yeah. And I think a large part of that is because we do lack some standardized language. If we trained an LLM on a set of standardized definitions that I could then regurgitate at us then yes, I think it could then do that or simulate it.
But I don't think we're at the point. And I think Dr. Isaacs definitely showed this as well, where large language models and their raw base form could come close to approximating friend, you know, practitioner vocabulary.
Could it incorporate all I know.
Hearing into the future and I know us appearing into the future is.
Yes, it's also.
It's also everything that happened.
Yeah, it's just anything and everything can happen in the future but when you look at things like what Dr. Isaacs was saying, I look at chess chess, x rays I look at chess CTs.
And yes you can do identifications and have our standards standardized, but we don't have the right language on how to do identifications. And you could do a language model of large language model on trying to do those identifications, but one of the
reasons why we see those CTs in the first place we see those x rays in the first place is because of pathologies pathologies do not lend themselves to a standardization.
They've never lend themselves to a standardization.
So how can a large language model can machine learning or any other sort of AI algorithm, pick up on the non standardization and irregularities of pathologies and use them for identification.
So the standardization of and the lack of standardization of biomedical terminology which is the whole other rabbit hole. And I can definitely talk yeah you actually probably could maybe not with our language models.
But with convolution neural networks or transfer learning which we also saw usage of those in our symposium yesterday.
Yeah, you probably could. But I think there's a huge caveat here. It would have to be only hearing about traditionally expressed forms of pathology. I think that there's some level of logical variability.
I mean, the use of the old synchronic product hyperostosis. I mean that is the most wild thing.
It looks like a candlestick so there will be actually. So, as that uses they can take on such varying forms of complexity and then if you're only getting like this much of the vertebral column.
Okay, is it dish or is it just some really bad osteoarthritic clipping.
So I think it could do something, but I don't think it's going to be able to account for those buried pathologies and I actually think are more common than the textbook.
So I think it's going to be back to, which will be the, you know, the top of next year's basics of what anthropology is and it's right is looking at the, like, right like really looking at the vast variability of human existence and trying to categorize it to a certain extent
and trying to use it in a cultural setting. So like getting, like you can get something from a computer that will help you maybe guide where you're going with it but at the end of the day it's still going to have to be a human on the other end, looking at what
you're doing with your notebooks and then say, does that make sense to begin with, and then how do we use that in our practice. I mean, I knew I use chat GBT to create my life grocery lists and stuff because I'm lazy and I don't know how to cook, but at the end of the day,
I might have to look at it and be like, you know, maybe I'm not feeling like Mexican food tonight, and I want something else like, you know, that's a very simplified version, whatever, but I think that is the answer but you have to still have that human aspect to it.
I think that's essential I definitely don't think we're ever going to be in an environment where there's not a human on the outside. I personally, 50 years down the road of this could be completely wrong. I really don't think it's that level.
Yeah, but that by that time I'll be retired.
And again, this is the same thing that the original AI founder said in 1943, but like, it stagnated for 20 years nothing happened and then we have more powerful computers. So it might be on here, it might be a little bit.
Is it theoretically possible yes because it's just the replication of neurons.
So theoretically it shouldn't be too challenging, but I just, I don't think we can see your machine a lot. Yeah, like I think the contextual information unless you can feed all those variables.
And then that case you literally are very published and we're not. I don't know that's possible. Watson's not there yet. Not yet, but maybe I do have a question.
Change it a little bit.
And for me, for my research.
I've had to switch using image J to a different software package because my, my images were just so large and it changes.
When you're looking at sort of these large that these machine learning programs external network programs and things like that. When you're dealing with computational images.
3D is obviously better than tuning. The greater the flank cloud, the better the image, the better the outcome. But is there a plateau at which you know beyond this point, it.
It's just, you're getting nothing better from it, and just crashing the system or just not not receiving what you need out.
The literal answer. Yes.
I'm sorry I'm talking the most about this. I don't want to try on. But the literal answer is yes there is a point, there is such a thing as data saliency when you hit a point where more data do not necessarily result in better.
For forensic anthropological sample size we don't reach that level of saliency. But when we're talking like raw resolution. Yes, especially when it comes to human perception.
We can only perceive a lot we can actually replicate a lot more pixels that we can perceive and a lot more colors and we can perceive through our technology.
We do it because it's fine, I guess. So yeah, you get hit a point of a list and saliency and basically any aspect of technology.
No, I think with with even just with data sets trying to get the number of individuals into the system, I don't think we're ever going to get a point, or we can get that because we just don't have the files.
And we won't have the bodies. I think the only way that we could get close to that point is if we start routinely collecting medical data from living.
I think we could get enough patients at some very far point in the future, that we could have a big enough data set to have to worry about.
I think we could get living CT data. The problem is that I see is ethics and related to getting living CT data.
Or even to see CT data because particularly with living individuals, they may consent to their data being used for project X.
What about Y, C, A?
At what point do we say, do we know, do we say, here we want to take your, use your CT and use it for research and is that ethical to even ask?
I think it goes back to our next year's theme of back to basics, because where we're just collecting data, and then nobody knows about it and they don't, again, have their say, their consent that they can give generations later.
And this is where we started.
Are we just doing it again in just a different way? So there's, and there are very valid reasons why people do not want to get their information out and on many different levels, not beyond medical, they're very thin, you know, from history too.
And so that hasn't been established, how that should work. Nobody agrees yet how that should work. So I think it's, we need to take that memory that we're sitting with now to, to trying to understand how to build something that's larger than us to work with.
And I don't know the answer. Yeah.
I think a lot of it is like, I feel like a good portion of our field believes that, I don't know about, I wouldn't say all, but having to just keep in mind that yes, well, this might be data or this might be a collection that we're trying to learn from, we're trying to do our best to progress science in a way that's better for the future.
It's still people that we're working on and they had lived experiences and lives and families that cared about them and like, you have to always not forget that aspect when doing any research moving forward.
Even a practical measure, there's so many variables on how everybody's so different. I would, at some point you'd be like, I don't know the variables so I can't even use this and then collected and stored things, just like today in museums and you don't know what's the
answer to that. Yeah.
In case there was a data breach. Yeah, you know, it's all information.
Because we're collecting collecting collecting. And even though we have the old bioethics behind us, collecting where is that much secure, or maybe someone uses for different purposes that we still are not aware of, you know, at the point.
The problem I have and shooting myself in the foot knowing I'm shooting myself in the foot is the NMD IV, the Mexico, the seed identification database.
They were in a session, and a few years ago, and they were announcing a presentation, the database, and someone asked if these decedents had given their authorization to be used for research.
And the response was in the state of New Mexico, it's publicly admission admissible data because it's there. All deceit all medical examiner records are public data.
So it's out there. And I have had at the time and still have a real ethical problem about that database, because these people did not give consent for their CT data for their autopsy data to be used for research, and a lot of them are, yes, Native American
individuals, indigenous individuals, who our field has historically not been the nicest to.
And this is where like ethics and like legal frameworks don't necessarily line up, because there is a massive objectification of deceased individuals where people just forget that the body used to be a human being.
And a skeleton is not just like a bunch of random objects in the ground. It's like, that was a person, that is a person, that person has a family.
It doesn't matter, you know, like if it's legally, you know, allowed, we should be thinking more deeply into those ethical ramifications of what that person and the data around that person, those that can impact people who aren't still living in very big ways.
And I mean, I saw this on like Facebook or something, like that date site, but it was something that essentially said, just because it's legal doesn't mean that it's right. And that really like you had your talk that like, you had said there's no rights for the dead.
And it really like, you know, it hit home because I was like, yeah, this is like the legal applicability, which is like, what forensic science is supposed to be, you know, it's anthropology to a legal question.
So, is the legal question is really all that we should be worried about? And what are we looking at, at the full, not just for the purpose of answering that question?
I have used an MZ ID a bit.
I don't know what my full answers are to all of these thoughts. I've heard actually specifically expressed these concerns before.
And it's really hard because on one hand, we do get valuable information. Yes, we do get valuable, valuable, valuable information that can actually stand a chance at representing our actual populations, which we have never done.
We have never done an anthropology test. We have never accurately represented our populations and applying methods accurately to marginalized populations. We've never done that.
And at the same time, there are all of these ethical questions.
How far past the date of your death do you get consent over your body? When do you stop having long-term autonomy?
I think this is a broader question for biological anthropology. Sorry to burst the bubble. But like, we do the same thing with archaeological remains.
You know, we don't, we don't contact descendant communities and get consent from the descendants to excavate their potential loved ones.
We see a burial on the ground and we excavate it and we store it somewhere most often in a lab that very infrequently gets repatriated to who it belongs to.
So, do we bring into question our entire field?
I think we do. I think we do. But that is the purpose of being an anthropologist and that is the purpose of being young anthropologists is we always have to not only honor and respect what those that have gone before have done, but we have to challenge and find better ways.
And that's kind of why I know, like, don't get me wrong, I love listening to everyone talk to the anthropology section.
But because I know most of y'all are like, oh, I'll get your research later. I like to go to the other section talks, because most other sections within the American Academy of Forensic Sciences are not humanitarian workers.
You know, you know they are service members, like, they, you know, give service to a community and in some regard, but it's not necessarily from a humanitarian background, and with all the cultural adaptations that are necessary in order to do it properly for any given population.
And so I like to go and just see like, okay, what time potentially bring, or not just me because like I'm no one but like, what can this question, bring to the forefront of other fields with any forensic sciences to try to help the full of forensic science
to be more humanitarian, more human, because we're answering these legal questions but about people and I think more than just anthropology needs that. That's why I know when Ashley asked me to do this podcast to begin with I was like, yes, because I want more people to not,
you know, not just talk to anthropologists about anthropology because we can go around the grounded circles about the ethics of anthropology and I think we should, but it has to be more than just us. And so that's why I like coming to conferences like this to go to those other talks
and really see, okay, what do the other fields care about, and what are they doing research on, in what ways, I'm here to spend all day looking at drugs but never see the human side of things, and coming from Massachusetts, we had to chemist any
and Sarah Frapp, who did not see the human side of things, and ended up at the end of the day, getting close to 60,000 drug convictions.
I was like, I was last year maybe year before I asked, I'm not 100% sure my memory is rough, but they're talking about just like, what is objectivity in science and it's like, yes you're trying to be as objective as possible in order to make good science and I think
that would probably be something that we talk about next year for back to basics, but people aren't objective and people are the ones doing science and so like trying to just get other fields to just slap them across the face a little bit to be like, you're the one doing it, you're the one doing science, you're not objective, think through what you're doing.
I tried to drive that point home so frequently. I did a poster presentation yesterday on part of my dissertation, and I am talking about bio cultural approaches to forensics, all the time because I fully recognize that we cannot be completely objective and that we have to recognize
our biases, so we can understand how to challenge them.
I had a poster yesterday and someone said well what is the key takeaway, and I said the key takeaway is that we have to look at these deceased individuals as a whole person.
We can't just do biology, we can't just do culture, we can't just do toxicology, we have to use our whole anthropology brains to do what we need to do.
And I think, yes, I did me.
I think you're more than just some of your parts, you know, you're more than just your biology, you're more than just your culture, you know, like, you are all of those things all at the same time, that doesn't change any guy, and they play roles together
you know what I'm constantly screaming at the top of my lungs to whoever will read my papers is that biology and culture interact and you can embody your culture and your biology can affect your culture and vice versa.
And so we really have to critically examine how those things interact with each other to best represent individuals to identify them, obviously, first line of priorities to identify and repatriate, and also to build better, you know, stronger databases that can be
used for research.
And I think it's also not just on the deceivment, even though our job is to not worry about who did what to focus on missing. We also have to keep in mind what the end result of our analyses are for kids.
And with that forum that we called earlier and we, that was the purpose of it, having individuals from the Innocence Project, showing that forensic science has this incredible power to wrongfully convict if misused, and when you convict someone, you upend not just a life, you upend lives and communities.
And we have to recognize that.
We were recently talking about this earlier today.
And something that I often that I've thought about in the recent years that I try to challenge people to think about too, is why forensic anthropologists who do casework, right, who try to help in the forensic system actively are only ever considered to be experts for the prosecution.
And it's very infrequent that defense attorneys are able to get access to us because we typically work in medical examiner's offices and state and federal institutions.
And so we have to think to ourselves, is our science going to put someone into the system that's so, so, so.
And how do we challenge these cases where there have been jumps on the issues, where there has been an inaccurate application of the methods, how could we start integrating ourselves into that approach to make sure that people are not getting incarcerated, particularly when they are not guilty of what they're being charged with.
And going through a trial alone, it's a huge impact on someone's life. Even if they're not convicted, going through the system, the financial and social and technical training put on someone is really, really huge.
Not even the trial. Just the mere indictment. Even before you get to the indictment fence can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And then on, I mean, I don't know who's applied for a job recently, but it doesn't say where you convicted of a crime, it says where you charged with one.
And that's even before the science happens really, you know, to a certain extent.
I say, not to necessarily like change up the topic, but to let other people talk, I know I talk a lot too. I figure we can go through it like maybe everyone tell us, say like what your favorite part of the conferences, kind of bring it back to ask like what part of the academy, sorry.
Like what were maybe favorite talk, maybe favorite presentation, or just like something you felt like you learned a lot from this conference. I mean honestly my favorite presentation still at the end was the speakers that Ashley brought in from the Excellents Project.
Because I think I like I would have loved that to have been the main plenary session I would have loved the entire Academy to have heard it instead of however many people are in the room and have it not be scheduled at the end of the day when everybody is exhausted.
Because I do think those voices, particularly from Marvin, the person that was, I said, right. Yes, it was Marvin.
It was Marvin, who was the wrongfully convicted in vigil, like more people in our field need to hear the consequences of the science and the trials going wrong, so that they say they aren't just in a prosecutorial only mindset which, while we maybe are not too many people
in forensics are.
So thank you, Ashley.
Hannah, what about you, what was your favorite?
I really liked.
A lot of the talks about looking at some of our metrics and are they actually as accurate as they originally said they were in their actual studies. There was a really awesome poster yesterday about how to ask how to invent a brave estimation and
the initial engagement was like 80% accuracy or higher and then the student tested it and was like, oh well, you know, it's kind of your energy and culture like 50 something percent and I'm like okay, you know, let's think about lives, and you know using the brand's
technologies to assess.
And that makes me excited for next year's well I think just getting back basics about
what are things about and stuff.
And like the violence and violent.
From my side it's more about as we discussed, is that I personally, that's the multi let's say, approach modernism, the approach that we have in the US and then we can jump from another perspective, and to see other things and see other things
that are doing. I think that's the highlight.
And at the same time there is other thoughts that was too simple to make believe, and I think that's the tricky part, but it's too easy to work with the machine learning or the LLM and so on. So, it's not easy, I think, you know, well, it's not the way that was presented
it was like, you do this, you don't have this, you do this, and you have this, you know, and that's the contrast that you have from one side. It's simple for someone to understand how complex it is. And from the other it's too simple to be used.
But at the end, there is a question my
I sometimes I like, I get no one wants to comment on this, it's necessary to last too long, because we're all exhausted by the end of the day. But sometimes I'm like, can this have been a 30 minute talk? I just need a little more detail, please.
I think it's so true though, you know, everyone has to rush and then you're like, oh, no time for questions and then people run off. Like, okay, I guess I'll try and find this person or maybe just question.
But yeah, no, it's always the hardest thing. It's like, everything's happening for the next few days, Thursday, Friday.
This year in the fall, we only had posters, Friday, so this time to like, frame everything in here, like, overwhelmed, trying to like, do everything.
Oh, I'm going to read that paper.
Download it.
My favorite is, is you'll see them up there and they'll use a software package and they'll do something with it and like, I tried that and can't get it to squat. What extra thing are you doing?
I think that's, I'll get back on my soapbox, that's one of the big issues I have and why we organize our symposium focused on methodology and making the methodology accessible and understandable. I think it is completely inadequate to say, I plugged some things into this program.
Some stuff happened, and then I had a result, or even if you do that to the level of interacting with your computer scientists that way, where I just gave the stuff to the computer scientists, they did their thing to it, and I have a program.
I think we do have to critically evaluate how we interact with that data and how we apply these tools, and then actually have to say how to do it.
That was not my favorite part of the conference. Those are my big opinions.
I mean that also just like, I mean, I think probably most of us here got into forensic science, probably watched a lot of crime shows growing up and you're like, 24 hours and I got an answer to everything and I think sometimes these conferences make me be like, no way you could do that 15 minutes.
You cannot, you know what you can explain AI technology to me, who I barely get my computer to use Word.fin in 15 minutes. I'm sorry you can't, I need more time.
Sorry, go ahead.
I guess from the professor's perspective, just as a general conference theme, like talking about AI, be really important because it gives accessible research to different students with different needs in different places that don't have what you might think we're going to have in every program,
a huge storehouse of skeletons back there, and so it is, and that's just not the reality of those programs for students now. And so, something that, you know, you can tear out like metadata from and look at it in a different way and use different technologies to do that is increasingly important from from the perspective of having graduate students and undergraduates who want to get in this field, and then there's limitations
in many ways for them and so I think that that's can be important for students to see.
For all you students out there.
I did my thesis using entirely open access data I did not generate novel data. And I think that's important for us. Yeah, there's a discussion where should we be digging things up and storing them and maybe using them sometimes.
I think that's the second thing that's yes, please. I mean I love the data. Yeah, there's so much that there's so like, please use it, not to be little that there is a complexity and how we distribute interact with human remains research data.
But I've said this a lot, the biomedical field does it.
They do human remains research they do living human research.
They do something that they do and us, we don't have to just make it up from scratch. I mean starting to make us go through proper IRB protocols would be a great first step.
For those of you who don't know, any anthropologists or researcher who is doing a research study with humans or human remains has to apply for ethics approval through their university. And when you are using deceased remains they are automatically not considered human
remains as an individual and therefore not considered research. So that would be a huge first step is not just waving our hands away at things like IRB, it's been actually going through the process to ensure that we are doing ethical.
And for those that don't know IRB is institutional review board.
Research ethics. There you go. And I had to go through one. Yeah, I did too but only because I'm using living samples, you should do it anyway. Yeah, yeah, if you're using dead sample.
Yeah, even if they object to you. Yes, it's a very important process that you should be aware of. Yeah, you know what the questions are. Yeah, and other people should be reviewing your work before you do.
Yeah, and very, but it is an area where in different jurisdictions different groups of life and Canada, you have to file an REB. If you're using deceased humans, there is you know if sample bucks about it.
And that kind of plays into something that Taylor Thomas brought up earlier about the disclaimers that we started seeing in the first slide of presentations, which seems newish but not standardized and not forever presentation.
But they didn't include their human remains or had, I'm not including images of human remains because it's not necessary for what I'm talking about, or I even mentioned you know, land acknowledgments before we discuss things like that are becoming
more standard and other other fields and other fields of biological anthropology, and has not it was very clear that that's not standardized.
Yeah, for those of you who aren't here there were many presentations this year that started with some sort of statement that says, these are my opinion, and not the opinions of my employer or my funder or whoever it is and we
didn't have that specifically that's out of me required financial.
There was something else that came out and it was in quotes you have to have this exact wording on your slide and also have financial disclosure that says, do you have anything, any commercial financial disclosure.
I did not and I think that I think that might be interesting decision for the academy to make particularly in our political climate, because of the political climate.
Because,
well, we only have five minutes, because of the current political climate and the fact that the academy does receive federal grants.
They do not want the administration they're trying their best not to have the administration come down hard, and it literally can come down to our section, we're all in the anthropology section or most of the anthropology section.
The anthropology section has diversity and notions that may get hurt.
And if you use the academy and say, you can't have that it'll hurt us on a grander scale.
This podcast does not reflect this podcast reflects our views and our views only not those of our employers, the American Academy of forensic sciences, or anybody else under the sun.
And on that note, yeah I think I think we've talked to good men and if anything we've talked about today really resonated with you and you want us to go into more detail we can have further podcasts about it and try not to, you know, make this podcast too long,
maybe just, you know, you can listen to it on your ride home from work or school or whatever but if you find anything you found really interesting and want us to talk about more, you can always take some of our little guests here.
I don't know if I said little.
I'm Skylar.
Are fabulous.
Randy Santic.
So, we're going to have a little bit more of a chat with you and then we'll talk with us a little bit more about any of the topics or you might even get some of them to come and talk about their research in particular so thanks for hanging out with us, probably see you.
And on that, good evening to all will have, you know, the normal emails and everything up there for you all.
Bye to all. Oh, and we, we apologize Jenna could not make it this, this year she couldn't make it to AFS. She had a personal commitment this evening, and our thoughts and prayers are with her as she's doing that.
Thank you.
I wave to myself.
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