Irish culture has become more violent in recent years, State Pathologist Marie Cassidy said.
The chief forensic expert said homicides across the country had grown far more vicious.
"You don't get single stab-wound deaths, as if they [ victims] can get to a hospital they will survive," she said, describing it as a "more violent culture".
The Glasgow-born professor, who took over her role from Prof John Harbison almost two years ago, said deaths now generally result from multiple injuries as it makes it more difficult for the person to be resuscitated.
"They stab them, shoot them, then set them on fire," she said.
"Things have become much more complex," she said during an hour-long lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.
Prof Cassidy said the forensic pathologist's job in deciphering the death scene was now taken over by advances in science.The extent of what science can reveal through DNA has almost become too extensive.
"We are now frightened to even breathe on a body in case we submit a cell and it can be picked up and used in evidence against us."
The professor, who has examined mass graves in war stricken countries such as Bosnia for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, said she survives the job through her black humour, adding that relatives are harder to deal with than bodies.
She said a postmortem can only show an approximate time of death. On television, however, fictional pathologists often give a precise time of death. "I always say, 'Hire him, hire him!' because he is obviously much better than we are."
The professor said she did not fear that such television programmes as Crime Scene Investigation were teaching people how to cover their tracks. "People can get that information anyway," she said. "I think it makes it more interesting, kind of pitting your wits against it."
Prof Cassidy, who is intrigued by legendary investigators such as Sherlock Holmes, said of criminals: "They always do something stupid and that is why they get caught."
The audience heard there were now a vast number of people involved in investigating a suspicious death - with dentists, radiologists, paediatric experts and anthropologists called in for their expertise. "It is amazing how much information you can get."
Prof Cassidy said they are frequently called out by gardaí who believe a body has been found. However, hoax remains have taken a new turn in recent times.
Gardaí around the country are frequently being duped into thinking they have found the foetus of a baby, but it is really a plastic alien toy.
She said officers were bringing the egg toys, which are in the shape of an egg containing slime and a small figure, to the State mortuary at a rate of about one a month. They look nothing like a human foetus, she said. - (PA)