Week 1 - 1 Basic Ideas in Forensic Science

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From the course by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

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Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

468 ratings

We have all seen forensic scientists in TV shows, but how do they really work? What is the science behind their work? The course aims to explain the scientific principles and techniques behind the work of forensic scientists and will be illustrated with numerous case studies from Singapore and around the world. Some questions which we will attempt to address include: How did forensics come about? What is the role of forensics in police work? Can these methods be used in non-criminal areas? Blood. What is it? How can traces of blood be found and used in evidence? Is DNA chemistry really so powerful? What happens (biologically and chemically) if someone tries to poison me? What happens if I try to poison myself? How can we tell how long someone has been dead? What if they have been dead for a really long time? Can a little piece of a carpet fluff, or a single hair, convict someone? Was Emperor Napoleon murdered by the perfidious British, or killed by his wallpaper? *For Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students, please be noted that this course will no longer be eligible for credit transfer.

From the lesson

Introduction to Forensic Science

Opinion Poll 10:00

Week 1 - 1 Basic Ideas in Forensic Science6:11

Week 1 - 2 What is Forensic Science?12:22

Week 1 - 3 Application of Forensic Science8:31

Week 1 - 4 Limits of Forensic Science10:56

Week 1 - 5 Locard's Exchange Principle8:25

Week 1 - 6 Roberto Calvi Case8:17

Week 1 - 7 Buck Ruxton & the Jigsaw Murders Case6:22

Week 1 - 8 Forensic Laboratories18:53

Week 1 - 9 Reconstruction & Re-enactment18:20

Week 1 - 10 The Woodchipper Murder Case; Summary9:56

Meet the Instructors

Roderick Bates
Associate Professor
Division of Chemistry & Biological Chemistry | School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences

[Music]

There's a great variety of different

topics that come up within forensic science.

It really is a subject of great diversity, as can be seen from this slide.

While we're looking at all this diversity, we should try and

dispel a myth that is built up by watching C.S.I. shows on TV,

and that is that an individual forensic scientist would never be

able to tackle all subjects that you see in front of him.

It really is a subject

for specialists, people specializing in one area of

forensic science, and they do not work as generalists.

In particular, we can split forensics into two areas.

On the left, you can see forensic medicine.

And forensic medicine is very clearly

defined because it's purely concerned with a body;

whether it's a living body or a dead body, looking at

that body, working out how injuries may have happened to that body,

is the job of specialists in forensic medicine.

And anyone in the field of forensic medicine would have gotten

there by first qualifying as a medical doctor and then specializing further.

On the right, you have what is properly called forensic science, and

this is dealing with just about everything that is not a body,

from fingerprints through to DNA.

And people in this area tend to have

good qualification in one of the basic sciences.

So you have forensic medicine on the left, forensic science on the right.

Now television programs have made forensic science very fashionable at the moment.

But even without TV, many forensic scientists

have achieved some kind of celebrity status.

On the left is Singapore's own Chao Tzee Cheng.

His area of course was forensic medicine and he

was one of the founders of this area here in Singapore.

In the centre you see Dr. Pornthip and she's one of the

most well known practitioners of forensic medicine from the Kingdom of Thailand.

And

you have to say that she doesn't look like

what you imagine someone in that field would look like.

And on the right hand side is one of

the first celebrities of forensic science or forensic medicine,

and this is Sir Bernard Spilsbury.

And during this course we'll discuss a number of

the cases that came in front of Sir Bernard,

and he was a great authority figure in forensic medicine in Britain,

certainly in the first few decades of the 20th Century.

When you spend a long time studying forensic science

and looking at the different crimes that have been committed,

you may start to get worried about going home or going outside your house.

So to begin the course, I'd like to offer you a little bit of reassurance

that the world, or at least most of the world, is actually a fairly safe place.

So here I've selected

some murder rates for different places around the world.

So if we exclude countries where there is actually a war going on, then

the highest murder rates are in countries such as Colombia.

A few years ago,

the rate in Colombia was much higher, it dropped in the last few years.

It's still a very high rate by worldwide

standards, and this is due to drug gangs and

it's particularly concentrated in a few cities such as

Medellin, where the drug gangs have been very powerful.

Currently one of the highest murder rates in the world is Honduras, and again,

that is due to drug gangs and the murder rate there recently was

reported to be 71 per 100,000 population per year.

From watching TV, because so many crime shows on TV comes from the

United States, we often think of the United States as a very violent country.

But their murder rate is only 4.7, well below that of Honduras and Colombia.

The interesting thing about the United States

is the great variety within one country,

so that 4.7 average hides huge areas where the

murder rate is almost 0 and a few places where the murder rate is much higher.

For instance, Washington D.C., the murder rate

is significantly higher, almost up at Colombia levels.

Actually, that murder rate for Washington D.C. is

a great improvement over a few years ago.

Here in Singapore, it's relatively low, at 0.51.

Here in the United Kingdom where I come from, 1.23.

And other countries in Europe, for instance, it's that order of magnitude.

So don't be afraid to step outside your house.

Generally, it's not that dangerous a world.

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