3 answers
Cecil
Student
Nicholasville, Kentucky
1
Question
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What are three important things I should know about Forensic science careers?
#forensic #science #forensics #career
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Stephanie Goldman
Forensic Scientist
10
Answers
Albany, New York
Updated
Stephanie’s Answer
I think it is important to know that:
1. Forensics has a lot of different specialties. You are not going to be doing all types of Forensics. You will be choosing if you want a career in something like drug analysis, or DNA testing, or latent prints. Labs do not have one person who does all of these things.
2. The forensic scientist is just one small piece of the investigation. You might give your report that the substance you have is cocaine, but you won’t necessarily know where it came from, if the person who had the cocaine was tried, what the charges were or how the case was resolved. There are a lot of different players all doing their part and you generally are only going to know what you need to know.
3. That being said, it is probably also important to know that testifying will be an important part of your job. You need to not only know how to test the evidence, but also how to get in front of a group of people and explain (at a level they can understand) how you did what you did, what the results mean, and what the limitations of those results are.
1. Forensics has a lot of different specialties. You are not going to be doing all types of Forensics. You will be choosing if you want a career in something like drug analysis, or DNA testing, or latent prints. Labs do not have one person who does all of these things.
2. The forensic scientist is just one small piece of the investigation. You might give your report that the substance you have is cocaine, but you won’t necessarily know where it came from, if the person who had the cocaine was tried, what the charges were or how the case was resolved. There are a lot of different players all doing their part and you generally are only going to know what you need to know.
3. That being said, it is probably also important to know that testifying will be an important part of your job. You need to not only know how to test the evidence, but also how to get in front of a group of people and explain (at a level they can understand) how you did what you did, what the results mean, and what the limitations of those results are.
Joseph Neilson
Radiation Detection Physicist
218
Answers
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Updated
Joseph’s Answer
I'm not in that field myself, but I recently went to an event where a woman working in forensics spoke about her experience. Bear in mind this may be a bit different where you are (this relates to the UK police forensics), and I'm not sure how much these are "important to know" things, but my takeaways from what was said:
1. It's not like CSI on TV. They have to simplify and dramatize a lot for the media. For example, they combine roles. We don't really have people working at the crime scene and then going back to the lab - we have 2 or more different roles - the forensic practitioner/technician works at the crime scene and sends off evidence to the lab, where a totally separate forensic scientist does the analysis.
2. To use the terminology correctly, people don't leave fingerprints. Fingerprints are the actual bumps on your fingers, and you don't leave parts of your fingers behind. Apparently, the marks left by your fingers are technically called "fingermarks" instead.
3. In particularly complicated cases, taking samples from a scene can take months of the forensic technician's time.
4. Switching between regular torchlight and UV torchlight is great for spotting a number of fine details such as blood or fingermarks.
5. Forensic practitioners can come from a range of different backgrounds. The woman I spoke to had studied Criminology, but I understand a whole range of other backgrounds are required.
1. It's not like CSI on TV. They have to simplify and dramatize a lot for the media. For example, they combine roles. We don't really have people working at the crime scene and then going back to the lab - we have 2 or more different roles - the forensic practitioner/technician works at the crime scene and sends off evidence to the lab, where a totally separate forensic scientist does the analysis.
2. To use the terminology correctly, people don't leave fingerprints. Fingerprints are the actual bumps on your fingers, and you don't leave parts of your fingers behind. Apparently, the marks left by your fingers are technically called "fingermarks" instead.
3. In particularly complicated cases, taking samples from a scene can take months of the forensic technician's time.
4. Switching between regular torchlight and UV torchlight is great for spotting a number of fine details such as blood or fingermarks.
5. Forensic practitioners can come from a range of different backgrounds. The woman I spoke to had studied Criminology, but I understand a whole range of other backgrounds are required.
Dale Softley
Forensic Agronomist
9
Answers
Lincoln, Nebraska
Updated
Dale’s Answer
The previous answer is reasonable. One needs an unquenchable search for knowledge based on solid scientific facts. Perhaps it is most important to understand that not many questions have definitive answers but degrees of probability. Don't settle on the first answer you get, but what do measurable facts support.