"Niche Disciplines"

Why language matters and an introduction into a new deep dive

Introduction

On 6th March 2025 the Home Office posted a new job advert for a “Director of Forensic Services”. The ad has since expired and I’ve no idea if it will remain online for long so below are some screenshots.

Setting aside for one moment, how depressed this ad makes me feel, I want to concentrate on the phrase “addressing risks to niche disciplines” as for me, it is quite telling of just how far the police ideology on forensic science has penetrated government thinking, even persisting through a change in government.

Over decades we have seen the language used to describe forensic science change. The “science” element has largely been dropped, whilst the “forensic” element has largely become so widely used both inside and outside of criminal justice, that it is difficult to understand precisely what it means anymore.

The emergence of “digital forensics” has had a huge impact on “forensic science” to such an extent that the forensic science that existed for centuries prior lost ownership of its name. There are now really only two fields: digital forensics and everything else that is not digital forensics. It’s caused a real problem for modern day authorities with limited bandwidth and short attention spans - authorities consider both fields together, merely because they both have “forensic” in their title. This is a massive policy failure that remains evident to this day, even in the concept of the role in the job posting above; for example the decision to enforce a scientific testing laboratory standard on digital forensics remains the most baffling and controversial policy decisions of the last decade.

Over the last decade, the police have used several terms to describe forensic science. Their first attempt at this was both the most telling and the most egregious - “traditional forensic science”. IMO it was the most patronising and disrespectful term, because it implied that everything non-digital was somehow inferior, the same can be said for “old-school”, which I hear a LOT.

Here’s Chief Constable Chris Sims from 2015:

Here is Gary Pugh, our current Forensic Regulator (as of April 2025), telling parliament that CCTV has replaced fibre examinations:

The problem with Forensic Regulators is that after you’ve had a number of them, they can start to contradict each other. Here is Gary Pugh’s predecessor, Dr Gillian Tully, telling parliament that CCTV is a major problem:

In the face of the digital revolution, if we must accept a renaming/rebranding of forensic science, then perhaps “physical forensic science” would be the least offensive. Whatever we may call it, I believe all forensic practitioners, digital or physical, would agree that placing the digital field and the physical field in competition with one another is, quite frankly bizzare, a structurally flawed model, doomed by design to produce sub-optimal outcomes for criminal justice. Why? Because digital forensics and physical forensics answer very different questions, all of which are crucial to the outcome. It is the classic vision of the police, the adoption of a new tool, must go hand in hand with the disposal of some existing tool, particularly if it means they can exert their control over it and reduce the reliance of independent experts, employed outside the control of the police, who may disagree with them from time to time.

All of this is a segway to “niche disciplines”, ditto “niche providers”, ditto “small providers”, ditto “specialist disciplines”. I prefer Dr Karl Harrison’s definition which I have outrageously stolen from the internet, link below:

Karl is 100% correct, it is all about the frequency of use and in England and Wales it is the police who controls the frequency of use. They determine what is a niche discipline and what is not a niche discipline. As far as scientists are concerned the term “niche disciplines” is a construct solely of police and politicians.

The reason the Home Office are interested in “addressing risks to niche disciplines” is that they were warned by the House of Lords that “there was evidence to suggest that some specialisms are at risk of dying out because they are no longer sustainable for business purposes”. Countless warnings from so many people about this from at least as far back as 2008, has finally seemed to break through, this from me in 2015:

So why now and not 17 years ago? Perhaps it’s the fact that, globally, compared to 2008 or 2015 when I gave that interview, innovations in DNA technologies have created new problems. Globally DNA experts are tearing into one another over how DNA could have been transferred onto a surface. DNA in 2025 is stronger than in 2008/15 because it is more sensitive and it is weaker than in 2008/15 because it is more sensitive. You can get a DNA profile from next to nothing now, but you can also pick up a lot of garbage and it’s a hell of a job trying to figure out what’s garbage and what is not.

This from Orchid Cellmark¹:

From the perspective of the police, the positive impact of the DNA-17 introduction was an increase in detection sensitivity, meaning that DNA information could be obtained from samples containing less DNA, more degraded DNA or both. However, with increased sensitivity came a significant increase in the number of DNA profiles where more than one DNA contributor was apparent. These mixed source DNA profiles required more complex analysis and interpretation by highly trained reporting scientists and, despite the development of software to aid profile interpretation, every profile took longer to analyse.

There are huge arguments, heard globally, on how, or even whether, the transfer of DNA can be assessed and interpreted based on the quantity and quality of DNA present in a profile.

My enthusiasm for forensic fibre examination is only matched by my enthusiasm NOT to enter that debate, however I can only add that systems of forensic science provision that require juries to interpret complex concepts and mechanisms such as the transfer of evidence based solely on one type of forensic evidence are going to suffer poor outcomes. How much easier would it be for juries to weigh up the likelihood of transfer if they have multiple evidence types supporting a case for transfer?

When scientists were in charge of what forensic science was done and how it was done, the bottom line was always, always to adopt the ‘belt and braces’ approach, because the last thing you want is to end up in court with your trousers around your ankles. That’s why we used to do more than one thing, and that’s why we recovered everything from everything first time. That’s what scientific quality in forensic science means. It’s all about having contingencies and the flexibility to use them when things go wrong, and things always go wrong eventually. The answer to strengthening DNA in the courtroom, may not mean more DNA, or better DNA, but it is likely to mean more forensic science.

So in the next few posts I am going to explore how a mainstream evidence type became a niche evidence type and its current status in England and Wales, and in conclusion what can be done about it. Spoiler alert - it’s fibres.

1. Driving Forensic Innovation in the 21st Century, Chapter 10