Forensic Science has contributed to our world a great deal. People often misunderstand Forensic Science and believe it is much more capable than it really is. As a matter of fact what you see on T. V. is around 80% false or over-exaggerated in some way. To Start of, Criminal Investigation is the largest and most known form of Forensic Science. Some of the more known areas include; Fingerprinting, Ballistics, DNA Identification, Fiber Samples, Computer Animation, Documentation analysis, etc. To get this out of the way in the beginning, what you saw on last nights law and order is far from the truth.
Things they do in a matter of hours take months at a time, and most of the time aren’t even plausible concepts. Fingerprinting information varies in numerous ways. Each persons fingerprints are different in some way (Unique). The technical term is actually DNA fingerprinting because us as a person obviously can’t just take a look at a fingerprint and see the difference; we must analyze the actual DNA behind it.
Sometimes a miss concept of most people is, that fingerprints stay perfectly fresh for extended periods of time. Partial fingerprints and even degraded full fingerprints can turn up to be useless sometimes. Fingerprints are not admissible if they are 99. 9% sure, they must be 100% or a Forensics lab will not support them. DNA Fingerprinting and the fingerprints that are at the tips of your actual fingers are two different things.
The ones we actually use in court are DNA because there is a 1 in 50 billion chance that these are maybe wrong and with actual fingerprints its just an experts opinion. Computer Animation is another valuable aspect in Forensics. Many People believe that they are getting virtually framed, and that computer animations are inconclusive. This has been shown to be wrong and is said to be much more accurate then an actual man reenactment.
Computers are able to precisely pinpoint every single aspect of the reenactment. Some argue that this may Create reality and not illustrate it, but thats up to the court to decide. An example of how this works was used when a snowplow struck an Iowa State basketball players car killing him. The plow driver was going 10 miles over the speed limit. This video was recreated and showed a fatal blow the side of the deceaseds car.
Although he was speeding this movie was recreated with the plow going the speed limit and he still would have been fatally killed. The Iowa student didnt look when pulling out into the intersection if youre wondering. Also, Forensic Scientists use computer animation to simulate the aging or appearance change in a criminal or deceased individual. Though this is a great technique, things cannot always be exactly 100% certain on the reconstruction.
A lot of the deciding whether this if valid, is up too the jury souly. This can even help provide the cause of death in a badly degraded badly. Documentation Examination is another very important aspect in Forensic Science. Before computers and machines everything was handwritten obviously. Things were much easier to trace back then they were today.
A lot of this is still used today though in Forgery and people still do hand write many things. Now we are able to trace a handwritten paper back to the person or sometimes a typed paper from the machine it came from. It is also common for a Forensic Scientist to look at how a person writes to tell something about there personality. Advanced technology is still used for this with carbon dating, and restoring of damaged lettering, but sometimes simple is better.
The naked eye can sometimes tell enough on its own without having to use any equipment. In fact before these machines just an average person who they could define as having a good eye at spotting forgeries would be paid around $25 a page just to tell if it was a forgery or not, and this was 40 years ago. Many people try to use high-tech gadgets or high-powered microscopes to find forgery. All you need actually is to know what youre looking for. The smallest things such as a lowercase used in .
