Is The 'CSI Phenomenon' Good For Science?

Tycoon Guy writes "With CSI: Crime Scene Investigation airing its 100th episode this week, I wonder, how do Slashdot readers feel about the show, and its two spinoffs? On the one hand, they've caused a boom in the popularity of forensic science college courses, and they glamorize geeks bent over microscopes, rather than smarmy lawyers. On the other hand, they may also promote an inaccurate view of science: prosecutors throughout the country now worry about juries that refuse to accept eyewitness accounts or even outright confessions, and instead exclusively demand the kind of forensic evidence they see on CSI. But of course, in the real world, you don't get a test like that in mere seconds - or without spending a substantial amount of money. So where does CSI rate on the geek scale for you?"

For the unedcuated

[airnewt]

smarmy:

1)revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, or false earnestness (a tone of smarmy self-satisfaction -- New Yorker)

2)of low sleazy taste or quality (smarmy eroticism)

Full of bad science

[crow]

They get the science and technology wrong as often as right. It seems like every other episode where they enhance three pixels of an image to get a recognizable face in a reflection. Or there was the CSI:Miami where they got a saved email off of the wireless router that the person had connected through. At least when they got image data out of the NTSC overscan, they were using a real concept, even if the amount of overscan they recovered was vastly exaggerated.

More proof on unreliability of eye witness

[mekkab]

This navy study [truthinjustice.org]

and here [acfnewsource.org], and again. [thegreenman.net.au]

This may be nitpicky...

[FortKnox]

... but they overglamourize the job. The CSI people don't do the detective work... they do the crime scene work.

For an even worse example of something similar, look at the show "Crossing Jordan" where a medical examiner is doing detective work (umm... your job is looking at and studying corpses).

Maybe if the show had a detective, an ADA, and dedicated most of its time with the CSI team and showed how they interact with the other two, it would work better... think "Law & Order" with just a focus on CSI...

Actually, Navy NCIS does a good job. Good combo of detective work and their medical examiner and CSI are both big parts of the show. Very nerdy aspects... not a lot of junk science.

Only One Good CSI

[BRock97]

The original CSI is my favorite, as I can't stand David Caruso from the Miami show, and CSI: NY it too new to form an opinion (which is slipping to dislike right now). My one wish is that they would do more theft type episodes and move away from all murder. Case in point was an episode last season that involved the theft of some priceless antiques. Awesome episode. Not a drop of blood, but the process of how the determined who was the thief was fascinating.

That said, the CSI craze has caused an outbreak of stupidity. Recently, a friend received a stolen check where she works. Since she is the general manager of the store, she had to go to the bank and work out the details. The bank teller (besides being an ass) made the comment that my friend shouldn't "touch the check too often as they might get her fingerprints" and she would get in trouble. Honest truth, those were the bank teller's words. My friend responded with "CSI fan, eh?"

I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.

There you go, the $0.02 from some guy off the street.

Stupid cinematics!!

[Ced_Ex]

I love watching CSI as it is one of the more interesting crime shows, as well as the fact that it puts "science" in a more exciting role than "mad scientist", or crazy experiments.

However, the one thing that bothers me the most about the show above all others, is the fact that they like to do autopsies in the dark. They have the autopsy theatre in the basement with no lights on except for a dim bulb hanging over the body. How do they expect to see any markings on the body that way?

When I used to work as a researcher doing autopsies, we had a insanely bright room with white walls and lights that were brighter than the sun. Also, over the body we had a giant fume hood to take the smell away. And for forensic autopsies (which I have only observed), they usually have hoses washing over the bodies to keep the maggots from climbing over the area you are trying to examine.

Other than that, I love the show.

CSI discussed on NPR's All Things Considered

[The I Shing]

Back in May of this year, NPR did a story on the popularity of CSI [npr.org], and how the show compares to the way investigations are carried out in reality. The differences are pretty stark, but the excuse is that reality doesn't make for a gripping crime drama.

Re:it's a good show

[SageMadHatter]

I think of Jurassic Park where the little girl is staring at the computer with some 3D file system view and says, "This is a UNIX system, I know this" and I realize that most shows are not very accurate. I imagine CSI's view of forensics is about as accurate as Jurassic Park's snapshot of UNIX. But it is entertaining anyway.

That however was indeed a Unix system, running SGI's 3d File viewer called FSN [sgi.com]

University of Tennessee

[Anonymous Coward]

I go there. I don't study anthropology for grad school but I know some who do. But so many kids want to be forensic anthropologists because of Bill Bass and the Body Farm that they have to tell them the cold hard facts: There are no jobs in the real world. Tennessee has less than 20 state forensic anthropologists working at any one time in a population of 5+ million. UT now trains cops to do the work at a summer academy. Academics do the research and develop the techniques and the cops implement them.

Re:Its good, look at what happened with OJ

[Reverberant]

The OJ jury didn't believe overwelming forensics and set him free.

In the OJ case, it wasn't about believing the forensics, it was about believing whether or not the forensics were tampered with. It's not like the LAPD (at the time) was the most honest of police forces.

Re:Inaccurate?

[mcmonkey]

Isn't CSI just a darker "Quincy, M.E."?

No, that's Crossing Jordan.

But I like how on the cop shows, the cops do all the work, question witnesses, etc. Then on the detective shows, it's the detectives who work the evidence, question witnesses, etc.

Then you have CSI, a show about the crime lab, and even after having an episode where one of the main characters says, "we're just the crime lab; we don't question witnesses," all the crime lab folks do the detective work, question witnesses, etc.

Crossing Jordan, like Quincy, is about a medical examiner who, can you guess...follows up on evidence, searches crime scenes, questions witnesses, etc.

Re:I enjoy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have people confess at the end, because a lot of the time their evidence is compromised, they mishandled it, and they screwed up the case (though they don't say it that way).

Frankly, as a biochemist, I wince whenever I see them reach for a pipette or their "luminol" - they suck at basic biochemistry skills, they have shoddy controls, and they often get the basic science wrong.

I'm glad the shows are encouraging people to go into science, but the shows are just as poorly researched as standard Hollywood movie fare.

Death Investigators

[sjbe]

I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.

My wife is a pathologist and as part of her training she had to take a death investigators course. According to her, death investigators do nothing but gather evidence. No more, no less. Their job is not to solve the crime but to make sure all the evidence is recorded, catalogued, transported to the appropriate labs as needed, etc. They are not permitted (in general) to try to make conclusions from the data; that's the job of the detective assigned to the case. You are right that firearms are generally not carried, they definitely don't order the cops around and they certainly don't drive around in brand new Hummers!

Apparently applications for forensic examiners & assistant positions are up something like 100X in the last few years. Like JAG, Law & Order, ER and a bunch of other shows, CSI glamorizes a job that really isn't all that glamorous. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing, we do need people in those jobs but it isn't exactly giving people realistic expectations.

but stroking the face?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree wholeheartedly, those are indeed the best gloves. But when David Caruso strokes his face while wearing them, I cringe. I was trained in a Human Genetics lab, which means any contamination was a major headache, and we used nasty chemicals all the time. So he was either contaminating evidence, or giving himself cancer.

Re:Infinite Resolution

[harrkev]

Yes, They can remove some "jaggies" if used properly. It is very good at removing periodic noise, which is exacly the sort of noise that you get when you up-sample. But the image will stll be blurry, just not blocky. Makes it look better, but you don't get any extra info. Fourier transforms are NOT some sort of magic bullet.

Just FYI: A discrete fourier transform is VERY closely related to the Cosine transform (you can implement a consine transform using a DFT and some data shuffling). The cosine transform is the key ingredient of the JPEG algorithm. More useless trivia.

not bad

[Is0m0rph]

Show's not too bad (though I don't care to watch it all the time, my wife rarely misses any of the 3). The software they are shown to use on the show makes me cringe though. They could at least try to make it look authentic. Take a low resolution picture, type a bunch of the stuff on the keyboard (why doesn't the software on the show use a mouse? Is typing more exciting for the viewer?), and bam picture resolution somehow increases greatly and they see a key clue in a reflection or something.

Re:jumped the shark

[Cpt_Kirks]

IIRC, the dube was spiked with dust.

I have seen people do really weird stuf on dust.

No cannibalism, though...

Planted Evidence?

[earthforce_1]

You have to be very careful with the context of forensic evidence. I recently watched a show called "masterminds" where a jewel thief in Raleigh made a point of deliberately leaving behind tiny snippets of other people's hair, blood and skin, and tromping around the crime scene in huge boots leaving footprints that were 3 sizes too big, in order to throw off investigators. He was only caught when his fence tried to hawk part of the loot on EBay.

The interpretation of results can be highly subjective. There was a famous case a few years back in Canada where a well known doctor accused of rape willingly drew his own blood sample for investigators, which came up negative. They were sure he was guilty, but couldn't figure out how he had faked the blood test, as they had seen him draw the blood sammple from his arm right in front of them. As it turns out, he later confessed that he had inserted a sealed, plastic surgical tube into his arm from a small (unseen) incision further up his forearm ahead of time that contained a sample of somebody else's blood.

Re:That's what I don't like about it

[Wyatt Earp]

As someone who has been forced to see every CSI ever, the Vegas series does not portray the Police as honest, hard-working or fair. Nor does it portray the Justice System are fair, why there was a Judge who was ordering evidence to be thrown out.

There's been cops leaving thier post, cops shooting civilians, court clerks killing suspects, cops gambling on duty, cops taking hookers home and so forth.

Re:Grade

[Neil Blender]

I have not watched much of the show, but I don't much care for shows that wrap everything up in a neat little box and make people think that all crimes are solved in an hour, give or take commercials.

You should watch the show "The First 48" on A&E. It follows dectivees on two murders, from the minute they get the call to the end of the first 48 hours, then sometimes a follow up from days, months or years later. It's all unscripted and real. Sometimes they solve the crime, sometimes they don't. It's pretty fascinating. Kind of weird to think about the production crew sitting around a police station waiting for a murder to happen.

Re:Good show, somewhat unrealistic

[Jeremy Erwin]

And why do none of the CSI techs never wear headcover while leaning over a crime scene looking for evidence; hairs, dandruff, etc?

It's a common site on modern British police procedurals-- everybody wears disposable white bunny suits at a crime scene.

Re:Infinite Resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone has pointed that out to directors at some point. I remember them doing infinite-resolution stuff up until some place in seasons 3 or 4, but not any more. In the latest episodes their digital imaging techniques are more realistic.

Re:Full of bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical examiners were able to determine time of death fairly accurately even 50 years ago. Now better techniques exist that are able to give even more accurate results with minimum of work. In CSI they routinely use liver temperature measurement. It can be easily done with a simple electronic thermometer and it gives the time of death with an accuracy of 2-4 hours.

http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/forensicfiles /t echniques/time_death.html

Re:Grade

[Jeremy Erwin]

Yes, but Grissom later ordered the product, as it came with a rather useful database of chromatographic data.

CSI != real forensics :)

[Kethryvis]

I actually am taking a class in Forensic Anthropology this quarter (from a Board Certified Forensic Anthropologist even) and I have to say, while I knew a lot of the stuff on CSI et al was crap, I'm almost getting to the point where I can't watch them anymore. The very first thing my prof told us on the very first day is WE DO NOT SOLVE CASES. It was in huge caps on her slide. As forensic investigators, we gather evidence and provide it to the police. THEY solve the case. For instance, in class we have an assignment where we are given parts of a skeleton and we must analyze them and put our findings in a case report just like our prof would write for her cases. On a rib, I noticed a fracture. My job is to document the fracture, say whether it is ante-, pere- or post- mortum and what kind of injury it is consistant with. It is NOT my job to say that the guy was punched in the ribs by the assalant 'cause he wanted the guy's wife or whatever. My job is to say that I have observed a peremotrum fracture of the left fourth/fifth rib which is consistant with blunt force trauma and then explain why (the pattern of fracture, etc). It bothers me to see these forensic investigators getting all Dragnet everywhere.

My prof actually discourages people from going into forensic sciences because really there aren't that many jobs. And she would know! Yes she's a well known forensic anthropologist working on some high profile cases (including the Peterson case) but she also teaches at a university. Doing case work is not her total bread and butter.

I'll also say that a lot of the people in my class are very influenced by the CSI shows and think that forensic work is all computers and microscopes and pretty things. They don't realize they have to deal with dead and bloated bodies, gunshot trauma, and other things that you shouldn't be seeing in slides at 9:30 in the morning (this morning it was maggots. Needless to say, I didn't have anything with rice for lunch). I don't think CSI will have the dalmation effect for forensic sciences (ie, people saw 101 Dalmations and went out and bought dalmation puppies because they were OH SO CUTE.. only to realize that they couldn't deal with the breed and gave the dogs away), but I will say I have to deal with a lot of tarts in my classes who I'd rather kick to the curb since they just want to wear tight little tshirts look pretty like they do on CSI.

Re:Its good, look at what happened with OJ

[TekPolitik]

you are specifically instructed as a juror that the 5th amendment can not be construed to imply guilt. It would defeat the point of the 5th amendment if you did that.

It is way more complicated than that. Even if it weren't, your point is not relevant.

The question in the criminal trial is not whether the (non-accused) person giving the evidence is guilty, it is whether the evidence has been presented to find the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that the person giving evidence took the 5th cannot be used to imply their guilt, but it does deprive the court of the evidence needed to judge the value of other evidence. That clearly leaves the evidence in doubt. It is not that it was made weaker by the refusal to testify, but that it was not given adequate strength by favourable testimony.

Even the fact that the accused didn't testify will have this result. If they do have testify as to their innocence, then as long as they don't screw up (which is an extreme risk in testifying in your own trial since any slip-up is more damning because it comes from your own mouth), they will provide more evidence in their favour than if they do not testify.

The difference may seem to be one of semantics, but it is a difference well understood by lawyers. It's a bitch for judges to try to explain it to juries though.

The beyond reasonable doubt standard does tend to favour the accused anywhere the evidence is weak or lacks support - but of course it's meant to do that.

Re:Grade

[loraksus]

Goddamnit, indeed.
Not to sound like a tinfoil hat wearing american or anything, but I suspect that the shows are reinforcing the fact that the cameras are actually useful.

The vast majority of cameras out there are pure crap, designed with resisting abuse in mind instead of quality. Some places put a lot of money into cameras (Worked at Mervyns for a while, loss had some nice zoom lenses)

Still, if the video is stored, the quality will be dismal - cameras regularly record 10 or 24 hours onto a standard 2 hour vhs (the 6hrs slp ones). Not only that, but they mix the feeds from 8 cameras into a single scene.

You won't realistically get better than a 320x240 image (if you get half that, I would be impressed) per scene off the tape, and that just isn't enough to be useful. Digital? Not much better, disk space is cheap and re-usable though.

Quite simply, they can tell if you're wearing a hat, maybe how long your hair is, etc. Not much else.

Simple Color Psychology

[RedBear]

I think I read about that in an article on CSI:Miami. It's just color psychology. Most people don't consciously notice the color cast, they just think the reddish place is getting more direct sunlight and is thus hotter (Miami) and the bluish place is getting more overcast/shade type light, thus colder weather (New York). It gives each show a different "feel". Same thing happens in the photography field. Look up color balance, color psychology and white balance.

You probably don't realize it but a lot of the commercial images and things you see on TV are passed through a slightly reddish filter or white balanced on a slightly blue object (thus subtracting blue, the same as adding red) to "warm them up". It makes skin tones look more vibrant and everything looks more inviting and appealing, psychologically speaking. That's why things on TV often look more "real" than the everyday things you see around you. Apparently the general public doesn't like the drabness of color accurate reality.

Re:Grade

[Dash-o-Salt]

You're partially correct. What you see moving down from the cloud and up from the ground are called leaders. When they meet each other, charge flows UPWARDS during the return stroke. Relevant link here [wvlightning.com]

A car acts as a Faraday Cage, [wikipedia.org] allowing the charge from the lightning to travel around the outside of the car (without traveling through the middle of the car, frying occupants).

I think that covers everything!