What is a Forensic Scientist?
To turn on the television nowadays and flip to a crime show re-run on any given channel no matter what time of the day it is is not uncommon. On those crime shows, there are always people at the crime scene who work for the police department that have matching jackets that say “FORENSICS” on the back. These people are the forensic scientists, and they exist in real life, not just on dramatic television shows.
“Forensic” means anything that pertains to the law, which makes a forensic scientist a scientist who assists police in conducting investigations to determine who may have committed the crime. They analyze all pieces of evidence from a crime scene or from a victim by running chemical tests, and then they compare these results to evidence from the suspect to see if they are a match.
In addition to running these tests to compare evidence and DNA matches, they also present these results in court as expert witnesses so that the jury can make informed decisions regarding a verdict.
At crime scenes, these scientists and the police pull evidence and put them in designated bags to preserve the evidence. Evidence can be anything from hair strands, clothing fibers, or anything else that could be helpful in determining who was present at the scene of the crime. The evidence is then brought back to the lab where the scientists perform exams such as running DNA checks to see who the evidence came from. When the police have a person whom they suspect have committed the crime, then they get samples from the suspect. These samples are given to forensics and more tests are run to determine if there is a match that implicates the suspect at the scene of the crime.
Forensic scientists have a very important job that keeps people in jail if they are guilty, or set free if they are innocent. One difficult part of the job is determining if evidence was planted to implicate a suspect; however, it is the duty of the police and the detectives to get the whole story from all suspects and parties involved in the case. When the case is presented in court, then the jury can decide if the suspect is guilty or not when they are presented with all aspects of the case, with the evidence being one of the most important factors.