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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Forensics & Criminology

*Time to start a thread devoted to this subject.  I think this would be such a rewarding career.  A few links to TV programs my husband and I occasionally watch:

The New Detectives

Cold Case Files

The progression of sophistication in DNA testing is especially interesting.  A case we watched the other evening involved the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl in the late 1980s.  Police found a hair sample at the crime scene, belonging to the perpetrator.  It was kept as evidence.  When DNA testing first came along, the hair sample proved "invaluable" because the shaft did not contain the root.  A few years later DNA testing became more sophisticated -- can be done without the root.  They ran tests on the strand of hair and nabbed the perpetrator. 

It's also cool how Luminol works.  Murderers think they've adequately cleaned/mopped up the blood...Luminol reveals otherwise. 

Or how they wait for suspects to toss a disposable cup of coffee or cigarette butt and swab for saliva, to obtain DNA in that manner if the suspect won't cooperate and willingly submit to DNA testing at the police station, etc. 

The "cold case files" are especially intriguing.  Sure, many go unsolved...but some even 30+ years old can be solved rather quickly with the continually advancing forensics techniques.

I worked for a pathologist who of course also specialized in forensics; I think that career "brush" hooked my interest.  Actually visiting the crime scenes and seeing the corpses however...    I think I'd rather be in the sparkling clean laboratory performing tests with tidily gloved hands, handling samples and etc.    Sometimes I'm tempted to consider switching careers and going into this type of work, though (yeah, even the gruesome aspects).

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,059

Re: Forensics & Criminology

Then you also like the CSI shows as well or possible even the Muder she wrote ones as well.