Sex and Race Determination of Crania by Calipers and Computer: A Test of the Giles and Elliot Discriminant Functions in 52 Forensic Science Cases

Abstract The sex and race of unidentified skeletons must sometimes be determined by medical examiners or crime laboratory personnel who have no formal training in physical anthropology. Their diagnoses, based on a hasty review of the chapter on skeletal identification in a forensic pathology textbook or on old lecture notes from a homicide seminar, are often wrong. Such knowledge cannot always substitute for the skilled eye and practiced judgment of a physical anthropologist who, in the course of his career, may have examined hundreds of skeletons.