Whats most satisfying about forensics work?
What I enjoy most about forensic science is the problem solving. When you have a situation, you look at the evidence to see what it’s telling you. How can you use the experts, scientific tests, and your own knowledge to answer questions and solve problems? The forensic field is changing. Things that my contemporaries did, they don’t necessarily do in general crime labs any more. Laboratories are being accredited and there are different standards. There are written procedures detailing how to do the analysis. You can’t just say, “I know how to use these instruments and I can figure it out.” The changes are driven by arguments that attorneys make. There’s a standardization for everything: how do you know this smear is margarine? How do we know you did it right? They have to know how the procedure is done, what the normal range is. The attorneys, who are not scientists, want to read a result and know it’s the same no matter which lab did the test.
