• Question: does anyone know anything about forensic science

    Asked by martin.org to Matthew, Francesca, Andrew, Laura, Rebecca on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      It depends what you mean by now anything. I have a couple of friends who work in the area and we have had a number of discussion about their work. It is a very interesting field of work, and the best department are now equipped with a number of spectroscopic tools in order to analyse data on the spot.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      “Forensics” – that is a term used a lot! It is unclear what people mean when they use the word, but its literal definition means “in open view” or “in public” – it basically means presenting your findings, along with the evidence, so that people may see exactly how you came to those results. This is most frequently applied in a court of law, but really, whenever we publish our work, we are doing it ‘in public’ for others to see how we came to those results!

      I suspect what you mean is about science as used in law to prove things. Spectroscopy is used widely in forensic science to identify evidence, to spot drugs, and to identify fibres and DNA. It is quite cool, but I don’t believe it gets an accurate portrayal in popular culture. There is no “magic box” that will tell you what your sample contains – it will give you a spectrum which we as scientists then interpret using our wealth of training.

      (I should say that some ‘boxes’ can spot key materials – drugs and so on, but all it can do is say whether it recognises what it sees or not – if it doesn’t recognise what it sees, you need to call in the scientist. There is always the risk of the ‘false positive’ – your machine telling you that it is an illegal drug, but it is actually washing powder! Never completely trust a machine!)

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      I know a fair amount about it. A lot of it is just analytical chemistry, so studying the molecules or DNA present at a crime scene to see what that tells the police about what happened. I tutor some A-Level and University students and one of them was a Forensic Science student. I taught him about various techniques that would be used by forensic scientists. It always looks really cool on TV but in reality it isn’t nearly as glamorous and takes a lot longer than you’d think!

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