Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) analysis of skeletal remains by accelerator mass spectrometry is an essential tool in multiple branches of science. However, bone ¹⁴C dating results can be inconsistent and not comparable due to disparate laboratory pretreatment protocols that remove contamination. And, pretreatments are rarely discussed or reported by end-users, making it an ‘elephant in the room’ for Quaternary scientists. Through a questionnaire survey, I quantified consensus on the reliability of collagen pretreatments for ¹⁴C dating across 132 experts (25 countries). I discovered that while more than 95% of the audience was wary of contamination and would avoid gelatinization alone (minimum pretreatment used by most ¹⁴C facilities), 52% asked laboratories to choose the pretreatment method for them, and 58% could not rank the reliability of at least one pretreatment. Ultrafiltration was highly popular, and purification by XAD resins seemed restricted to American researchers. Isolating and dating the amino acid hydroxyproline was perceived as the most reliable pretreatment, but is expensive, time-consuming and not widely available. Solid evidence supports that only molecular-level dating accommodates all known bone contaminants and guarantees complete removal of humic and fulvic acids and conservation substances, with three key areas of progress: (i) innovation and more funded research is required to develop affordable analytical chemistry that can handle low-mass samples of collagen amino acids, (ii) a certification agency overseeing dating-quality control is needed to enhance methodological reproducibility and dating accuracy among laboratories, and (iii) more cross-disciplinary work with better ¹⁴C reporting etiquette will promote the integration of ¹⁴C dating across disciplines. Those developments could conclude long-standing debates based on low-accuracy data used to build chronologies for animal domestications, human/megafauna extirpations and migrations, archaeology, palaeoecology, palaeontology and palaeoclimate models.

通过加速器质谱对骨骼残留物进行放射性碳（¹⁴ C）分析是科学的多个分支中的必不可少的工具。但是，由于不同的实验室预处理方案可以去除污染物，因此骨¹⁴ C测年的结果可能不一致并且无法比较。而且，最终用户很少讨论或报道预处理，这使得它成为第四纪科学家的“房间里的大象”。通过问卷调查，我量化了在132位专家（25个国家/地区）中进行¹⁴ C胶原蛋白预处理的可靠性的共识。我发现，尽管超过95％的观众对污染持谨慎态度，并且会避免单独糊化（大多数¹⁴C设施）中，有52％要求实验室为其选择预处理方法，而58％的实验室无法评估至少一种预处理的可靠性。超滤非常流行，而XAD树脂纯化似乎仅限于美国研究人员。分离和定型氨基酸羟脯氨酸被认为是最可靠的预处理方法，但是它昂贵，费时且不能广泛使用。有确凿的证据支持只有分子水平的测年才能容纳所有已知的骨污染物，并保证彻底清除腐殖酸和富里酸和防腐剂，并在三个关键领域取得进展：（i）需要创新和更多的研究资金来开发负担得起的分析化学，可以处理低质量的胶原蛋白氨基酸样品，¹⁴ C报告礼节将促进跨学科的¹⁴ C约会的整合。这些发展可能会基于用于建立动物驯化，人类/大型动物灭绝和迁徙，考古学，古生态学，古生物学和古气候模型的时间序列的低准确性数据而结束长期辩论。