Means, motive, opportunity. Forensics are just toppings on this 3 legged stool.
“In U.S. criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a common summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can be determined in a criminal proceeding. Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant committed the crime (motive), and whether the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity)” Wiki
At the same time, results could have more than one explanation and interpretation can be tricky. One has to consider factors such as context (i. e., where the evidence was located) and timing (is the evidence affected by aging?).
Then there’s the aspect of probability. In other words, how likely would it be for the evidence to be the result of one phenomenon as opposed to another. Then there’s the aspect of whether there were previous situations which had similar results.
All of this assumes that the interpretations are made after the evidence is examined with the best available equipment using the best methods.
One of the problems, though, is that there is often reasonable doubt in the interpretation and that can be enough to be considered lack of proof.
Is nothing sacred?
Selected Science.
I’d like to see a program such as “Nova” do the same research and reporting on the science of climate change.
That would be real journalism.
Ultimately, any system invented by a human being for detection can eventually be bested by a slightly smarter human. AI won’t help because smarter programmers would best the newly “unbeatable” system. This is a general fact about human consciousness, bound up with the nature of reality. We can only approximate certainty. A danger lies in unjustified trust in any science as an infallible guide to reality.
Means, motive, opportunity. Forensics are just toppings on this 3 legged stool.
“In U.S. criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a common summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can be determined in a criminal proceeding. Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant committed the crime (motive), and whether the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity)” Wiki
At the same time, results could have more than one explanation and interpretation can be tricky. One has to consider factors such as context (i. e., where the evidence was located) and timing (is the evidence affected by aging?).
Then there’s the aspect of probability. In other words, how likely would it be for the evidence to be the result of one phenomenon as opposed to another. Then there’s the aspect of whether there were previous situations which had similar results.
All of this assumes that the interpretations are made after the evidence is examined with the best available equipment using the best methods.
One of the problems, though, is that there is often reasonable doubt in the interpretation and that can be enough to be considered lack of proof.
Is nothing sacred?
Selected Science.
I’d like to see a program such as “Nova” do the same research and reporting on the science of climate change.
That would be real journalism.
Ultimately, any system invented by a human being for detection can eventually be bested by a slightly smarter human. AI won’t help because smarter programmers would best the newly “unbeatable” system. This is a general fact about human consciousness, bound up with the nature of reality.
We can only approximate certainty. A danger lies in unjustified trust in any science as an infallible guide to reality.