In my introductory lecture of Fundamentals of Forensic Science, the lecturer spoke about the problems currently faced in the field. Forensic “science” is not always an exact science. Things such as drug analysis and DNA comparison is exact and very scientific, but clothing damage, blood stain patterns and scene reconstruction is not. It requires a lot of domain knowledge, common sense and just a little scientific method. They are, however, very useful no matter how much actual science goes into them. There are three other problems faced – 1) not enough research is happening in the field; 2) things are treated as unique when they are not and 3) confirmation bias.
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