Robert Jurmain is a professor emeritus of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the List of oldest schools in California, oldest public university on the West Coast of ...

. Jurmain holds an A.B. in

from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

and a Ph.D. in

Biological Anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a natural science discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly fro ...

from Harvard. He joined the San Jose State faculty in 1975, and taught there until his retirement in 2004. He is the author or coauthor of three textbooks on physical anthropology. In addition, his monograph ''Stories from the Skeleton: Behavioral Reconstruction in Human Osteology'' (Gordon and Breach, 1999, ) discusses the problem of determining what a person did, based only on markers in the person's bones such as fractures or evidence of

osteoarthritis Osteoarthritis is a type of degenerative joint disease that results from breakdown of articular cartilage, joint cartilage and underlying bone. A form of arthritis, it is believed to be the fourth leading cause of disability in the world, affect ...

. Jurmain demonstrates that much past inference of this type has been based on flawed or

circular reasoning Circular reasoning (, "circle in proving"; also known as circular logic) is a fallacy, logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy, but a pragmatic defect ...

, and instead argues that a more rigorous approach to this sort of research is called for.Review of ''Stories from the Skeleton'' by Sarah King (2003), ''Journal of Biosocial Science'' 35: 475–476, .

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American anthropologists University of California, Los Angeles alumni Harvard University alumni San Jose State University faculty {{US-anthropologist-stub