Scientific Method Applied to Forensic Science Paper Essay

Scientific Method Applied to Forensic Science Paper - Essay Example The scientific method is applied to forensic science to help forensic scientists gather needed evidence to come to a conclusion about a criminal event. Though it follows the same basic ideas and techniques as the original tried and true scientific method, forensic science has their own tweaked version of the method, which is as follows: observation and description of a phenomenon, or a group of phenomenon; formulation of a hypothesis, or hypotheses, to explain the phenomenon; use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomenon, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations; â€Å"performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experiments (James, 2009)†. These methods aid forensic scientists in the solving and understanding of the events of criminal investigations. The first step in the forensic scientific method is to observe and describe phenomenon or a group of such. The forensic scientist needs to be able to understand what they are seeing when they are viewing the crime scene and the evidence that they inspect. â€Å"If they describe it wrong or relay the information incorrectly, they will botch the experiment, thus botching the investigation and lessening the chances of solving the crime accurately (Braswell, 2007)†. They have to focus on the entire crime scene, taking in every bit of information that they can and making note and taking pictures of the totality of the scene. The recording of what they find allows them to look back at everything later, giving them the chance to find new evidence that they overlooked during the initial inspection. They have to look at the scene as a whole, breaking the scene up into smaller sections to further their collection of evidence and comprehension of the crime scene. With closer inspection, they can begin to understand what did take place, so all