Question: do you work with other forensic scientists in different lines of work?

Anna Williams answered on 17 Jun 2011:

Hi Steventamara,
Thanks for the nice question!
Yes, I work with a lot of other forensic scientists, in lots of different situations.
1. If I am at a crime scene, for example, and trying to excavate a body or skeleton that has been buried (say in someone’s back garden, for example), then I would be at the crime scene with a forensic archaeologist. He or she would slowly and carefully excavate the body, until we could see whether it was a body or a skeleton. Then a Home Office forensic pathologist would have to pronounce the death, which is to officially say that the person was dead, and then the examination could continue. Once it was all excavated, the pathologist and I would examine the body in the morgue to determine the cause of death, age, sex, ethnic ancestry and stature. We might need a forensic odontologist (dentist) to help us to get a positive (100% sure ) identification of the body/skeleton. Back at the crime scene, there might be a forensic entomologist looking for insects on the body and around the site to see how long the body had been dead, and a forensic palynologist would look at pollen grains around the body to see if he/she could tell when in the year the body had been buried, or if there was any disturbance to the vegetation in the garden that would give clues or trace evidence to help us fiind the person who buried the body. Other scientists working at the scene, or getting involved in the analysis might be footwear experts, forensic biologists and chemists looking at blood stains or drugs, forensic fibre experts, and forensic ballistics experts if there was any guns used.
2. If I was at a disaster scene, there would be a big mortuary set up to allow all the scientists to work together to process the bodies and eventually find identifications for them all. In the mortuary, there would be forensic radiographers and radiologists who take and examine xrays of the bodies to look for anything useful or dangerous (like fractures, pace makers that might help, or bombs or sharp things that might injure the people working on the body). There would also be forensic anthropologists, forensic odontologists (dentists), forensic fingerprint experts and forensic DNA scientists, all working together to try and identify the victims. There would be forensic pathologists there trying to determine how the people died – for example, they would look to see if the pilot of the plane had had a heart attack or something like that, to explain the crash.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the most common I can think of! 🙂