Blog postings on forensic science. Not ‘forensics,’ which is a nearly meaningless term. The word ‘forensic’ is related to the term ‘forum,’ for court. So ‘forensics’ means trial practice, or something like that. Correct terms include ‘forensic chemistry,’ ‘forensic pathology,’ and, for a very unusual case, ‘forensic paleontology.’
State crime labs and sloppy forensic science
Science comes up routinely in court - DNA testing, breath tests for alcohol, chemical tests or gas spectrometer tests to determine what a substance is made of, often from a police-run crime lab. The lawyers aren’t usually experts in the science, and neither is the judge, nor the jurors, and so the science is usually explained through the testimony of a scientific expert such as an employee of the state crime lab who performed the test. When scientific testing is performed by industry, or by academia, the people doing the test have a...
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