Is craniometry scientific?

[Brännvin]

I know many here like physical anthropology then, just wondering, is craniometry scientific?

Why not more accepted in scientific circles?

[Lutiferre]

Whether it's scientific seems to me to depend on what purpose it's used for (what kind of claims are made to interpret the measurements and are they really mandated by the data?) and whether the methodologies developed for it stand up to the test of scientific method as a whole.

[Poltergeist]

Craniometry was used to construct old style racial theories. The new ones are being mostly forged with the help of genetics.

[SilverFish]

They're available now at familydnatesting. :p

[Phlegethon]

While craniometry could be considered an auxiliary science it should not be mixed up with phrenology which was quite en vogue till 1945. Not much difference to the Lombrosology of the late 19th century.

[Absinthe]

Who cares? It's fun! :p

For me it has been a useful physiognomy tool. It has helped me predict quite accurately the behavior on some people based on some general craniometric characteristics :loco:

[Phlegethon]

Alright then! Classify me!

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/2212/coneheads23mz.jpg

[Tabiti]

Not really scientific, since there are no serious investigations proving its correctness, maybe due to the thinking it's old fashioned, discriminating and "nazi". However, due my personal observations as a person who pays attention to physical traits, mostly because I used to draw, I've noticed there are certain links between features and character. In fact there is a whole "science" called Physiognomy and it has something to do with craniometry.
I also know doctors use craniometry to describe some genetic diseases.

[The Black Prince]

Craniometry is still researched by the use of multivariate statistics. The static race/subrace typology system was abandoned during the 1970's mostly. Although nowaday genetics does sometimes use the geographic terms Mediterranean or Nordic to asign a population it is not used in the way of static breed/race.
We now know that the human phenotype is more dynamic, not fully discontinue distribution of racial types, neither full dependant on clines.
That is the main research point nowadays.. how important are inherited traits/genes vs environmental adjusted traits vs mutation rate vs diet vs epi-genes, etc..

btw. here are some of the nowadays studies of craniometry involving multivariate statistics:

Climate Signatures in the Morphological Differentiation of Worldwide Modern Human Populations (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122580379/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

Contribution of genetics and environment to craniofacial anthropometric phenotypes in Belgian nuclear families. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19728541?dopt=Abstract)

S.L. Sankina, 2009. THE ETHNIC HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL NOVGOROD (BASED ON CRANIOMETRIC DATA). Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, Volume 37, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 119-134

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And concerning all the typologies.. its fun to do.:thumb001:

[CommonSense]

It is, but you can't base physical antrhopology solely on skull measurements. Look at the similarities between Med and Nordic skulls, for example.

[Token]

Only when associated with genetics and archeology.

[Silver Lining]

It is scientific and it has always been scientific, people here have just no idea what "science" is. They think it's some secret occult thing only some high priests can do by empirical studies. Very wrong.

Craniometry was, however, not the most exact science ever. Mostly because measuring many traits is nearly impossible and could only be approached by "looking" at it (Schauverfahren), so you could essentially measure nose breadth and length, but you could not really objectively classify the overall shape, what is actually a very important feature, probably more than the raw measurements, whose variance overlaps a lot between populations in the first place. But now with 3D scanning and so on you COULD do a lot more, perhaps even become more predictive and informative than CURRENT genetics (it is the phenotype that matters, after all and the genetic interactions are way too complex to ever understand them and to synthesize all those findings, perhaps AI will help someday).
Second problem is that before our modern computers it was very complicated (and expensive) to run statistical analysis on the data, so they only used small sample sizes and very few variables. What they did in the 70s with multivariate methods actually resulted in LESS accurate conclusions (e.g. they claimed that Corded Ware could not be derived from the Kurgan culture) than just "looking and classifying".

[Columella]

It’s a classic method to isolate differences in skulls.
It’s normally used in archeology, paleoarcheology and forensics.