Breaking the barriers between intelligence, investigation and evaluation: A continuous approach to define the contribution and scope of forensic science.

•Forensic science has evolved towards a separation of increasingly specialised tasks.•Such divisions are viewed as a threat to the advancement of science.•A non-linear continuous model is proposed to guide forensic reasoning and processes.•Hypothetico-deductive reasoning, iterative thinking and entropy are core concepts.•Forensic science should be defined as a scientific, holistic trace-focused practice.