Science News10%
Who owns your bones? 48%
By Nancy Shute0%
7/18/2026, 11:00:00 AM
Topics: Anthropology, Humans
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Anecdotal, and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20% saturation with 49 hits. Analysis detected 517 faulty-reasoning hits from 245 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.3% and a BS Rank of 48% (11,407 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 52.10% of the article peer group.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and RepApropriation Act.
It requires institutions to return remains and artifacts to lineal descendants, tribes or other culturally affiliated organizations, or gain consent for their continued use.
Progress has been slow, and controversies over remains held by scientific institutions continue to erupt, extending beyond those from Indigenous communities.
In 2021, journalists in Philadelphia reported that the University of Pennsylvania was holding human remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing, in which city police dropped a bomb on a row house serving as headquarters for a group calling for Black liberation.
Eleven people were killed, including children.
Some of the MOVE families’ remains were used to teach anatomy classes.
Although those remains were returned to family members, more have since been found.
Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist recently retired from Howard University in Washington, D.C., is leading a new effort spurred by the MOVE revelations to prevent such abuses.
“We’re the ones who are holding this material,” she told freelance contributor Michael Marshall.
“The scientists are the culprits here.”
Jackson aims to guide universities and museums in ethically managing remains in their possession that were obtained without consent, including those from African American cemeteries.
And there’s progress on other fronts.
Medical schools now rely on people who choose to donate their bodies after death for anatomy studies.
Some schools hold ceremonies honoring donors when the class ends.
Hrytl no doubt would have been amazed.
Speakers
1speaker8.2%attributed speech225writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageFatimah Jackson
20 attributed words100% of attributed speech84% writer coverage
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Analysis
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