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Forensic Science Explanation Essay

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WHAT IS EXPLANATION?
We finished chapter one having made several observations of a scene. We then proceeded to review our observations so that we had removed assumptions, bias and unsupported belief from them. We now enter the second major step of science: explanation.

Explanations are operationalized questions. When you operationalize something, you define it in such a way that it can be practically measured. So, an explanation is defining your question in such a way that you can measure that question. Measurement itself will come in step three: investigation. For now, we want to review our questions and define them in ways that can be measured. Our goal is to move from observations and questions to explanations.
THE BURDEN OF PROOF
You operationalize your explanation so that you can provide some understanding of how confident you are in it. This has specific meaning for forensic science because in a legal situation, you have a burden of proof obligation. Burden of proof is the ability of the evidence to sway the conclusion from one …show more content…

When you ground your work on the explanations provided by others who have engaged in science, you are building support for your own explanation. We call this framework a well-supported argument, because ultimately, that is what an explanation is—an argument for why an observation works the way you say it does.

Note that this well-supported argument is not automatically correct just because it is based upon supported arguments. Rather, using supported arguments bolsters your confidence that your explanation properly expounds upon your observation. However, only investigating this explanation—putting it to the test empirically, will help you understand if this is truly the case. But what the supported argument does is place your explanation into a context by which you can properly frame it for

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