by D. H. Garrison, Jr.
Forensic Services Unit
Grand Rapids Police Department
Grand Rapids, Michigan
This Article Originally Appeared in the MAFS Newsletter, October 1991. Forensic science is the product of an uneasy and unholy mating of Science, the objective seeker of truth and knowledge, and Forensics, the argumentative persuader of courtroom advocacy. It is not called Justice Science, Law Science, or Truth Science, as many of us would like to imagine. We are a bastard child, an orphan, but still the subject of an intense child custody battle between our estranged parents, the truth seeker and the advocate. The tug-of-war goes on daily for our loyalties and confidences, each side offering candy and warm hugs. These separated parents have visitation rights. Sometimes they take our brothers and sisters away. Sometimes they don't come back.
We in forensic science like to think of ourselves as our mother's child--Mother Science, pure and incorruptible--and most of us start out this way. Some of us remain pure. Some grow up to be delinquents. The advocacy half of forensic science will not go away; it has weekday visitation rights and the power-of-subpoena. It has advocate friends called prosecutors, attorneys, cops, the press, and the Government. The advocates rarely understand the appeal of Mother Science, cannot fathom a search for truth in a game plan which calls for scores and trophies. They are constantly trying to persuade us to see it their way, to compromise, to bend just a little. They don't realize it, but what the advocates are asking for is Bad Science.
