Forensic scientist’s job isn’t exactly like ‘CSI’
Career spotlight Demand for work in DNA field rises

By Paula Burkes

Published: October 5, 2008

Brandt Cassidy had to laugh the first time he watched "CSI: Miami.” The TV show’s detectives collected a sample from a backseat car window where it looked like a victim’s attacker had sneezed. The next scene, police are swabbing the noses of a lineup of suspects.

In reality, they’d swab the insides of suspects’ cheeks, Cassidy said, because every cell in an individual’s body has the same genetics, or DNA.

A scientist and laboratory director with DNA Solutions in Oklahoma City, Cassidy uses enzymes and other solutions to purify and analyze bodily fluids for police work and more.

"On TV, everything works out every time they try it,” Cassidy said. "But in real science, it can be really frustrating, struggling to get a result from any piece of evidence.”

Still, Cassidy relishes the challenge and variety of his work, which in law enforcement includes a recent cattle rustling case involving two ranchers separated by a lake. After investigators found blood on the lakeshore of the rancher missing a calf and blood in the row boat of his neighbor, Cassidy matched the evidence with meat confiscated from the suspected thief and blood taken from the mother of the stolen calf.

In other cases, Cassidy analyzed the saliva from licked envelopes to clear a man suspected of sending threatening letters to his boss (the sender was a woman) and the DNA from every employee of a pharmacy from which a patient allegedly had received pills speckled with blood. (After all were excluded, Cassidy recommended testing the claimant, who could’ve been falsely seeking monetary damages.)

Job opportunities abound for graduates of forensic science programs, said Robert Allen, director of the master’s program at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa. Every large city has a crime lab attached to its police force, while state law enforcement agencies each have three or more labs.

"There’s a backlog of forensic cases nationwide involving lower priority crimes, like breaking and entering or car theft,” Allen said. "There’s also rape and murder crimes to be worked, where no suspect has been identified.”

According to a 2004 poll of the nation’s crime lab directors by the National Institute of Justice, there’s a 30 percent increased need for forensic scientists through 2014.

Dwight Adams, director of the University of Central Oklahoma Forensic Science Institute, said he hired people from a variety of backgrounds, even liberal arts, during his years as director of the FBI crime lab.

"If you’re hired by a lab, some labs will pay for your advanced degree,” Adams said. "So a master’s degree in forensic science isn’t a necessity to go into the field.”

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