Does Your Fire Causation Specialist Know the Meaning of Science?  And Should You Care?
You better believe you should care.

Does the fire origin and cause specialist you currently use know the difference between a copper wire melted due to an electrical arc or abnormally high temperatures, and one melted due to a eutectic reaction commonly found in fire scenes? This is something every competent fire cause specialist should know. And would he/she be able to adequately explain this difference to you - or more importantly - a jury? If not, you can only hope that FACTS is not testifying for the other side.

There's currently a great deal of controversy in our culture regarding science, and this has inevitably spilled over into fire investigation. Fire specialists are actually being advised by some legal experts to refrain from using the word "science".

Why? Because many of them (including the lawyers) don't really understand what science is, which can quickly become obvious in the courtroom to the detriment of the case at hand. The science controversy exploded here in Florida when another company's most experienced fire investigator was humbled during an arson trial. He had been presented to the jury as a fire scientist, but his inability to explain the scientific method drew probing questions and embarrassing answers which ultimately led to the dismissal of his testimony.

The determination of the origin and cause of a fire requires a scientific methodology. It is not an 'art'. Fire and crash (and crime scene) investigations fall under the category of 'historical/observational' sciences (like geology or evolutionary biology), rather than the more familiar 'experimental' sciences like physics or chemistry.

Fire is a highly technical, well-studied subject. Our understanding of it has evolved substantially since we first discovered its usefulness in a stone age campfire. Fire origin & cause determination, without a doubt, is a specialty which involves real science applied to real world conditions.

At FACTS, science is no mystery. It's an ongoing process which allows us to understand our physical world, and to make sense of that process we know as fire by observation, theory, and experiment. Trust your fire origin and cause determination to FACTS.

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