• Question: Do you know anything about forensic science

    Asked by sjshortall to Shikha, Colin, John, Kevin, Triona on 15 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by Zobo64.
    • Photo: Shikha Sharma

      Shikha Sharma answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      Hi sjshortall ,
      Forensics means using scientific methods when researchers try to investigate any crime. The first American forensic lab was created in Los Angeles by the police department in 1929. Forensic science involves scientist from different traditional research area like chemistry, biology, physical science. One of my friends who is working in a forensic lab, he told me once that when a crime is committed, the field officers visit the spot and collects sample and then lab scientist perform different test on the sample using their expertise. I feel their work is like playing a game where they need to solve a puzzle using different scientific experiments.

    • Photo: Tríona O'Connell

      Tríona O'Connell answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      I know that it’s nothign like on the telly (most experiments take a few hours or days to run, not twenty minutes with a snazzy beep and a print out).
      I also know, that jobs in forensics seem to be hard to find. I was at a talk by the head of the forensics lab in Ireland last year. He started the talk by saying they weren’t hiring, opened the questions and metioned they’re not hiring, and finished the talk with another mention of their hiring freeze. However, if anyone in there dies, there might be job openings (of course, they’ll also investigate the death carefully…. )

    • Photo: Kevin Motherway

      Kevin Motherway answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Boy do I! As part of my job we frequently have to gather evidence to be used in prosecutions. It is like gathering data for science with the added burden of maintaining a chain of custody to ensure that evidence gathered has been done so fairly and with the integrity of the evidence preserved. While a scientist takes a water sample and labels it, the scientist gathering evidence for court has to ensure that everything is sealed and never left unattended and that all the documents recording this are in order. Leave a sample bottle unattended for 5 minutes and it’s the useless as a piece of evidence! Even if it’s the smoking gun you need if you can’t prove a complete chain of custody then all the data gathered is thrown out but the court (and rightly so). There have been many miscarriages of justice where scientists didn’t ensure their tests were done correctly so, it’s only right there is a high burden for scientists to meet when getting data ready for court!

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