What Makes a Forensic Expert

Richard Jonathan O. Taduran, Ph.D.  |  16 July 2026

The recent impeachment proceedings placed an unexpected question at the center of public discussion. Before the court could assess the evidence presented by the prosecution, it first had to consider the qualifications of the person explaining it. Attention turned to academic background, institutional position, professional experience, certificates, and a short training course related to the examination being discussed.

The controversy raises a question that extends far beyond one witness, one case, or one branch of forensic science: What makes someone a forensic expert?

Courts regularly depend on specialists to decode evidence that the public, lawyers, and judges cannot evaluate independently. But true expertise cannot simply be assumed from a government title, an institutional affiliation, or a certificate of attendance. It must be actively demonstrated—not just declared.

Credentials Are Only the Beginning

There is no single path toward forensic expertise. A practitioner may develop competence through formal education, postgraduate specialization, laboratory work, supervised case experience, or years of practice. Most experts are forged through a combination of these, rather than a single milestone.

This is especially important in the Philippines, where highly specialized forensic training programs remain limited. Many practitioners enter forensic work from related disciplines and build their expertise through further training and experience. A scientist may begin in biology, chemistry, medicine, anthropology, psychology, information technology, engineering, or accountancy before specializing in a particular area of forensic practice.

In a legal system where the stakes are human liberty and genuine justice, mistaking general background for specialized proficiency has severe consequences. A flawed analysis does not just damage a case; it can result in a wrongful conviction or let a perpetrator walk free.

Institutional affiliation cannot, by itself, make someone an expert. Employment in a national investigative agency, police organization, university, hospital, or government laboratory may provide access to training and experience. It may indicate that the person occupies a relevant position. It does not automatically prove mastery of a particular forensic examination.

Prestige can sometimes create an illusion of expertise. A uniform, an official title, or the name of a respected institution may discourage questioning, especially when the audience lacks the technical knowledge to challenge the witness. But institutions do not conduct examinations. People do. Their individual competence must still be established.

The same principle applies to short courses. A two-week training program may be valuable as continuing professional education. It may introduce new tools, update existing knowledge, or add a specialized skill to an already established professional foundation. For someone who already possesses substantial education and experience in a related field, such training may be a useful supplement.

The problem arises when a short course becomes the principal basis of the claimed expertise. Attendance is not the same as mastery. A certificate can show that someone completed a program, but it does not necessarily reveal the depth of the curriculum, the qualifications of the instructor, the level of assessment, or the participant’s ability to apply the material independently.

Short training may strengthen expertise. It should not be expected to create it from nothing.

Methods Must Be Open to Scrutiny

Credentials may establish that a person is qualified to perform a forensic examination. They do not establish that the examination itself was conducted properly. That can only be assessed by examining the method.

At the heart of science are replicability and reproducibility. A forensic conclusion should not depend solely on the authority or reputation of the person who produced it. The procedures must be documented clearly enough that another qualified practitioner can follow the same steps, examine the same evidence, and determine whether the result is supported.

Replicability asks whether the same method, applied again under the same conditions, produces a consistent result. Reproducibility asks whether another competent examiner, using the documented procedure and available evidence, can arrive at a comparable conclusion. These principles do not require every expert to use identical words or eliminate all differences in interpretation. They require that conclusions arise from transparent procedures rather than personal authority.

This is why standards are essential in forensic science. Standards define how evidence should be collected, preserved, examined, documented, and interpreted. They create common expectations across laboratories, institutions, and practitioners. They also make it possible to identify when an examination departs from accepted practice.

Without standards, two examiners may approach the same evidence in entirely different ways, with no clear basis for deciding which result is more reliable. The court may then be left choosing between personalities, titles, or institutions rather than evaluating scientific work.

The limited number of specialists and resources in the Philippines makes standards more important, not less. Local realities may shape how standards are implemented, but they should not remove the need for transparent procedures, proper documentation, and independent review.

Forensic evidence becomes credible not because of an expert’s affiliation, media exposure, or prestige, but because the work can be examined, tested, and repeated.

Expertise Must Be Demonstrated

Questioning the qualifications of an expert is not a personal attack. It is how courts distinguish demonstrated expertise from unsupported authority.

A genuine expert should be able to explain what they know, how they came to know it, what method they used, and where the boundaries of their conclusion lie. They should also be able to acknowledge uncertainty and identify questions that the available evidence cannot answer.

The Philippines needs more specialists, more advanced training opportunities, stronger laboratories, clearer professional pathways, and nationally recognized standards in forensic science. Developing these capacities will take time. In the meantime, institutions must resist the temptation to treat affiliation, position, or short training as substitutes for demonstrated expertise.

A forensic expert is not created by a title, a certificate, or the authority of an institution. These may support a claim to expertise, but they cannot complete it.

What makes a forensic expert is the ability to demonstrate competence through sustained preparation, defensible methods, transparent reasoning, replicable and reproducible work, and conclusions that remain within the limits of the evidence.

A forensic expert does not resort to “Because I say so,” but is glad to say, “Let me show you how.”