Canada

I'm "involved" here, with a small "i". I've tried to avoid becoming "Involved" with a capital "I" by doing press interviews and such. My business is a geophysical equipment rental business, which included many of the GPR systems that are being used to survey suspected grave sites. I have no doubt that the things reported to have happened at residential schools are largely true. However, as a geophysicist, it has been drilled into me repeatedly "no anomaly is anything until it sees daylight".

In the mining industry, for example, you get geophysical anomalies all the time, but they are meaningless until a drill core is taken. Sometimes your interesting geophysical anomaly is just a blob of granite. "Show me the core" is a common refrain.

In the medical imaging industry, you have the same thing. A blob on an x-ray/MRI/ultrasound/whatever is just a blob until a sample is taken (biopsy or similar).

The GPR anomalies are being reported as "body-candidates" or similar couched language by the archeological professionals doing the survey. But it's still just a blob until exhumed. Unfortunately, this runs into a truly sticky situation: if they are bodies, disturbing them is sometimes sacrilege. But you can't confirm it is a body definitively without disturbing it.

This is a weird place to be wedged as a scientist. For any other target, we can verify. In the meantime, more GPR surveys are ordered -- it's non-invasive and provides blobs on a map. So it's good for my business for now, and I try to remain merely "involved".

Reports like the above talk about denialism. So I worry about raising my voice lest it provide fuel for those that take any shred of doubt as proof. It's so hard to be a centrist these days.