Forensic scientists and national security intelligence analysts have similar occupations: on a daily basis, practitioners in both groups must answer questions that require them to know the unknowable. The intelligence community has developed analytic tools and techniques to help analysts answer national security questions more effectively in light of these difficulties, in essence, to help them better “know the unknowable”. Forensic scientists can use these same critical thinking and reasoning tools to help them answer questions about crimes more effectively and accurately. Forensic intelligence analysis is defined as the process of analyzing forensic problems in the most accurate manner possible in order to create logical, unbiased analyses concerning probable past events. The structured analytic techniques used in this process prevent analysts from falling prey to the effects of mental models that occur in the intuitive analysis process.
