Why Scientists Make for Best Detectives!

One of my favorite hobbies during my busy work schedule is watching detective tv shows. After watching several shows like Psych, Columbo, Poirot, Prison Break, Monk, Sherlock, and Mentalist-, it became clear to me that scientists and detectives have lot of things in common. This thought gave me an idea to list some of the similarities between both fascinating jobs.

1.     Patience. Patience is an essential character trait for both detectives and scientists as both jobs require going through tons of paperwork. When a detective finds a case, presumably, the detective knows nothing about the victim. The detective needs to reconstruct the events that lead to the crime and determine who could possibly have a motive by talking to witnesses, relatives, and anyone who is acquainted with the victim. For scientists, the process either starts with identifying a problem or making an observation. It proceeds to literature review to comprehend the problem with a hypothesis and then coming up with an innovative method to test the hypothesis. To solve the puzzle, first gather all the puzzle pieces.

2.     Details. Paying attention to small details while not missing the big picture. For detectives, it is essential to pay attention to minute details as criminals, no matter how careful they are, usually forgets one minute detail which alone, if identified, can be used to solve the crime. For scientists, it is essential to pinpoint small details in experiments that could be confounding and minimizing those confounders (to avoid repeating experiments) with the bigger picture being testing the hypothesis. Look closely at the puzzle pieces to make sure they belong with each other.

3.     Creativity. Seeing what everyone sees and coming to a conclusion that everyone misses. By paying attention to small details, the detective can fill in gaps on the motive and how the crime is committed. For scientists, it is about going from summary to conclusion. From the obtained results, what can be deduced without overstating. Solving a puzzle takes creativity-an essential trait for scientists and detectives. In one of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes deducts who committed the crime by looking at what hasn't happened instead of what happened. He concludes that the crime is committed by someone the dog knew by identifying that the dog didn't bark. Biologists use a similar approach to identify the function of a new gene commonly known as “The knock out method”, where they remove the gene to see which function is missing. This outside the box thinking comes from looking at problems from different angles. Solving the puzzle without seeing the entire puzzle pieces.

To solve a crime, the creativity of the detective should surpass the creativity of the criminal. Criminals either by trying to prove some innocent party guilty by planting evidence or by creating an alibi get more creative with each exercise to evade law enforcement. The detective needs to be aware of these conditions and think accordingly. Nature is much more creative than human mind can possibly comprehend. In the words of Mark Twain, “truth is stranger than fiction, it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't”. To decipher the truths of nature imagination is more important than knowledge as Einstein pointed. For example, to measure speed of light one scientist put two rotating mirrors on top of two mountains and calculated the time light took to make a round trip. Sometimes serendipity – a nature’s gift – plays a huge role as is the case with Penicillin discovery.

4.     Proof. Obtaining proof thereby convincing jury that the suspect is either guilty or not guilty and convincing peer reviewers about the validity of scientific experiments is the final step for detectives and scientists respectively.

In most of the criminal cases evidence collected from crime scenes like DNA, fingerprint, and samples are analyzed by scientific techniques like PCR and MS to solve cases. The combination of detective skills and scientific techniques are exemplified in tv shows like Bones and CSI where scientists use evidence from labs to solve crimes usually with the help of a detective. My favorite tv show in this genre is House, who solves the diagnostics mysteries with the help of a team.

One of the obvious things about detective tv shows are that they are written backwards and solved from start. However, it is rarely the case with real police work as some cases will remain unsolved. Anyone who has spent considerable amount of time in a lab knows that there are some results which does not fit with any other data structure and can’t be explained. With time and experience all the things will start to make sense even failures. With more experience detectives and scientists develop fingerspitzengefühl (German term; meaning ‘finger tips feeling’), and detectives can see the patterns of a criminal and scientists can come up with new and creative ways to test hypothesis. This experience is popularly coined as “10,000-hour rule” by Robert Greene in his book ‘Mastery’ and Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’.

After writing this article, I know what I would have done if I had not done my PhD.