I do see you point and understand your passion for wanting better methodology for investigations because of its effect on a person’s life. Do I see the people you are talking about? Yes, I do understand your concern, and it does scare me seeing these individuals investigating fires.

Your question as to who is right and who is wrong is not that simple to answer. Fire investigation is nowhere near being an exact science, and for this reason it leaves the question of right or wrong up in the air. I can tell you it is better now than in the mid 1980’s before a group of individual took on the task to give guidance to investigators through the development of 921. You say there is not enough being made of the mistakes that are continuing and I do not believe that is right. One can use positive re-enforcement or negative re-enforcement to address this problem. If you attack a person head on telling him or her they are wrong, how would you expect that person to react? The mistakes you are talking about are being addressed by others. They are making an issue of these mistakes through being a advocate in court, by conducting research, by teaching correct information, among other efforts. If you look at every profession you will find they have all went through the same process of evolution. Do people get hurt during this process, yes. Our system is not a perfect system. What you need to understand is that the number of investigator trying to correct the problem with our profession are growing. The number of investigator holding themselves to a high standard is also growing. Yes there is a difference of opinion as to how we get there, but the goal is the same. Are we a long way from reaching this goal, I would say yes.

As to inserting your point of view, I believe if you offer specific ideas to correct the problems, your views will be better excepted. You may want to take more of a role in the education process. A positive address to a problem will always be better received than a negative one.

Good Luck