Jan 11
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Adams (1735 - 1826), 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770
While Abigail Scuito adored facts, sometimes they bothered her a little bit more than a lot. Especially when the facts did not match a theory.
As a scientist, she enjoyed walking down unfamiliar paths of thought, learning new and interesting methods and testing her theories. She enjoyed the puzzles that evidence could give her – the optimum way to attain the answers she was looking for, how to analyze her evidence without destroying it, figuring out a way to confirm an idea, and just the sheer variety of the items she could deal with.
In a typical week, she usually dealt with a large amount of suspicious white powders (which nine times out of ten turned out to be something completely innocuous), fingerprints and various bodily fluids, and the simply weird – analyzing DNA on the outside of rubbers, running catkin DNA, determining the geographical profile of illegal drugs, recreating the odd spontaneous human combustion scenario and finding a lot of porn on a lot of computers.
All in all, she was good at her job.
But to have a theory utterly destroyed by her facts?
She paced, full of frustration. Her eyes noticed Bert sitting patiently on her desk and she began to rant.
"This is not fair! Totally not fair!"
She checked he looked sympathetic before continuing.
"I had a theory, which Gibbs also shares by the way, but the evidence doesn't fit so it's completely wrong, and I'm not some kind of idiot who bends the facts to suit her and neither is Gibbs so clearly we need a new theory and obviously I'm the one to come up with it while el jefe is out in the field… Maybe I should call and update him?"
Bert seemed to approve so she reached for her phone. Gibbs would understand.