To enable hearings to continue, investigation officers are tasked with gathering all pertinent facts in an alleged breach of conduct. Determining "how good the evidence is," especially after speaking with witnesses or victims, is one of the challenges that federal investigative officers must overcome.
The majority of the time, communicators give these officers factual claims, which are beliefs, presumptions, or explanations that they want them to take as true. Factual claims are also known as assertions that are merely held to be true or unsupported views; hence, they are more or less dependable when there exists a substantial amount evidence to back the claims up or lack thereof (Browne, 2013). Moreover, in their line of investigations, investigative officers also encounter victims and witnesses’ opinion claims which are quite different from factual claims as the latter tend to have relevant evidence while opinions are somewhat personal beliefs. Such beliefs only become more factual in the presence of supporting evidence.
Investigations factual claims exist in three forms which include the descriptive conclusions (Browne, 2013). These can be termed as vivid impressions regarding a particular event, thing or person and well as a strong conclusion. Descriptive conclusions tend to state the explanation of a specific subject; therefore, the claim is presented as not only clear but also to the point. Another form of factual claims is descriptive assumptions which are unstated beliefs on a particular thing, person or event. The third form of factual claims is reasons to prescriptive and descriptive conclusions.
One of the difficult tasks undertaken by investigators is to establish either the absolute truth or rather the falsity of factual claims, which is extremely difficult, if not impossible to determine. As a result, the investigative officers are forced to seriously question the dependability of factual claims or rather which claims are most dependable. Therefore, one the most difficult tasks for the investigative officers working for the federal government is on how to determine the dependability of factual claims.
The dependability of factual claims the investigating officer can be assessed through a number of questions such as if there exists evidence, ways of determining if claims brought forward are true and if such claims can be proven (Browne, 2013). Other questions are such as if the claims are true and reasons for believing the factual claims by either witnesses or victims. Developing a habit of assessing these questions forms the basis of critical thinking. Through these questions, it is easy for the officers to determine whether there exists sufficient evidence to either support or rather refute claims and also make judgments where the preponderance of efficient, as well as reliable evidence, exists.
After seeking answers to these questions, the next difficult process for the investigative officers working for the federal government is finding evidence which is at the focal point of all investigations; evidence refers to the available body of facts or information that aids in indicating whether a proposition or belief is valid and true. To support factual claims, there exist different types of evidence which investigators use after determining that the type of evidence used is good enough.
One such evidence used by investigators is personal observation which is considered as a valuable kind of proof as it is the basis of daily reasoning and scientific research. This type of evidence is primarily dependent on the eyewitnesses’ testimony as a source of evidence, where there exists no trace evidence, not DNA nor fingerprints (Browne, 2013). However, one problem encountered by investigators using this type of evidence is based on the fact that, witnesses in most instances do not offer what can be termed as pure observations. Therefore, what is seen by the eyewitnesses and what is reported is filtered through a set of attitudes, expectations as well as values and biases; thus people tend to see or rather hear what they wish. Furthermore, eyewitnesses tend to remember only those aspects of an experience that are consistent with their prior background or experience. Also, most situations present a major hurdle in seeing accurately particularly due to the rapid number of events taking place, the presence of high stressing environments and eye-witnesses’ poor attention.
However, despite this, investigating officers can acquire “good evidence,” through many ways such as using the most recent observations and mostly those made by a large number of individuals under what can be termed as optimal conditions (Browne, 2013). Moreover, “good evidence” is only acquired from individuals that lack any apparent, strong biases or rather expectations that are directly related to the event under investigation. By assessing whether the evidence provided possess the above qualities can, therefore, be applied in determining, “How good the evidence is.”
Another type of evidence used by investigating officers is scientific research studies whereby, the evidence is collected and analyzed by trained people. One of the problems faced by investigators is based on the fact that scientific evidence to a great extent relies on observation which raises the question as to how dependable they are (Browne, 2013). Despite this, scientific evidence is greatly used as a guide in the determination of facts since most of the life events in the contemporary world tend to be complex and also because people are fallible in not only their theories but also observations regarding these events. Unlike in the case of personal observations of eyewitnesses, scientific evidence tends to be unbiased, thus regarding peoples’ intuition as well as observations. One of the primary ways in which investigators can determine “How good is the evidence” is through assessing the similarities in research observations made by a number of researchers; hence, scientific evidence is more credible when several researchers find the same results or make similar conclusions. As a result, scientific evidence tends to be more dependable particularly if results are replicated.
In conclusion, the question on how good scientific evidence is also determined by the available controls whereby, special procedures are applied to reduce errors in the observation and interpretation of the evidence. Moreover, “how good is the evidence” can also be answered through assessing precision in the language of the evidence provided; as precision in language is one of the primary components of scientific methods (Browne, 2013). Well conducted, scientific research for evidence is considered as the best source as is primarily on precision, replication as well as control, however, this does not mean that research evidence is dependable or accurate and neither is interpretation made from such evidence. Therefore, investigators working for the federal government are forced to approach such evidence with caution and should rely heavily on well-conducted research evidence.
Reference
Browne, M. N. (2013). Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, 11th Edition. Pearson.
