Standards in Forensic Practice

✍ Scribed by Allan Jamieson; Alan Kershaw

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 375 KB
• Volume: 40
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1355-0306
• DOI: 10.1016/s1355-0306(00)71937-x

✦ Synopsis

Standards in Forensic Practice

first and second paragraphs of 'Accreditation of laborato-Sir: It is unfortunate that I find my opinions attacked ries' -and those are just the guides! (Correspondence, from Dr Bramley, Science & Justice 1999; 39(4): 274-276) as 'ill-informed' and in a more directly personal manner than is warranted in a professional scientific journal. I am therefore forced to defend my professional credibility in addition to my argument.

Coming from a rather broader scientific and managerial background than most, with experience in the biomedical sciences and other professions allied to medicine, I have had the opportunity to experience first-hand, as scientist and manager, the attempts and dangers of those seeking to establish themselves as 'professional'. Although not acknowledged in Dr Bramley's letter, I am a member of the National Training Organisation Sector Committee which Dr Bramley chairs; I represent the Lothian and Borders Police Forensic Science Laboratory and the Institute of Biology on the Professional Register Consultative Forum; and I support and actively promote scientific training, as head of the laboratory, in many documented ways within and outwith my laboratory.

Being, like Drs Thompson and Bramley, not a practising forensic