Comments on: Forensic Science Research – What Research? http://www.weareforensic.co.uk/forensic-science-research-what-research/ A body of evidence... Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:34:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Dr Tom Bassindale http://www.weareforensic.co.uk/forensic-science-research-what-research/#comment-57 Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:25:42 +0000 http://www.weareforensic.co.uk/?p=816#comment-57 In reply to andy wade.

Thanks for your very thoughtful comment Andy. As someone who is seeing all sides of this with your various hats on I appreciate your input.
There has been some good discussion on this via linkedin and twitter, I’m glad it provoked some comment. As a summary opinion would be:
Academics require publications to justify (or gain promotion within) their positions
Practitioners require practical data to help evaluate their casework
The large providers are doing very little research that is disseminated to the wider community.

I had a few small suggestions above, one of them I have been thinking about (FSSoc Accreditation of a research module), and I will try and pull together some thoughts on that in the next few days. The link for the parliamentary enquiry is here.

Thanks again.

]]> By: andy wade http://www.weareforensic.co.uk/forensic-science-research-what-research/#comment-53 Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:32:09 +0000 http://www.weareforensic.co.uk/?p=816#comment-53 Very succinctly put Tom. Though to be fair the amount of research the FSS was doing in the past 5-10 years was pitiful. Don’t confuse validation with research; the two have different methods and objectives. A search through Science and Justice (the journal of the Forensic Science Society) over the past 5yrs shows that most published work was done by private forensic suppliers and academics; the FSS shared hardly anything and most of that was DNA with very little on anything else. Which is a pity because there was some useful stuff being done but kept in “in house” publications (not sure what happened to all this following the closure). A problem, imo, is that much academic research falls into the category of “so what?” and doesn’t address the needs of the practitioners and in my experience (with the exception of SHU!) aren’t generally interested in practitioners views. Nothing wrong with “blue sky” research per se, however, the balance is wrong at the moment. We all have a responsibility to get this right. Funding is a challenge, as you say. What role could the FSSoc or CAST (HOSRDB or whatever name is current) play in co-ordination? I would endorse your last comment for everyone to have a think and respond to the parliamentary inquiry.

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