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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?"
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. There is some cool technology, however.
I hate sigs.
I think the show is good for science, but as you stated can be bad for the judiciary system. Is it ever a bad thing to have the populice become enamored with knowledge?
Your concerns about the judiciary system are warrented though but I wonder if that will ever be too big of an issue that we have to deal with.
Its good to have the public have some knowledge of forensics. The OJ jury didn't believe overwelming forensics and set him free. Juries should also be smart enough to know hen to believe eyewitness accounts. oops, hoping for to much, why should I expect juries to be smart
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Sure, there is a lot of junk science, but I think anything that stimulates interest in the justice system, and that helps to reduce the stigma surrounding jury duty, should help to grow the pool of willing potential jurors. Otherwise, the only people you get on juries are the ones too stupid to figure out a good excuse to get out of jury duty.
For years, jury duty has been seen as a nuisance to get out of however possible. Now, there is a real trend toward seeing jury duty as your civic responsibility, and taking it seriously, and even getting excited about it. I think overall this is good for the criminal justice system.
As for prosecutors worrying about CSI making juries expect TV-like evidence, the judge sets the jury's expectations. In general, juries in the United States are seriously flawed due to the exemptions provided to most educated professionals. The bigger picture issues are more important than whether jurors are expecting to see CSI-style evidence.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You can wavelet and fractalate and vigourously wave your hands in the air until the lift you generate pulls you alongside a cruising 747, but you can not get more information than exists out of an image.
Most zooming algorithms suck, compared to the true content of the image, which is why we can do much better with our eyes. We know that is a "car", so we don't interpolate, say, a tire with jaggy lines, we know it is round.
But ultimately, take a fuzzy, off-true "3" and "5" and zoom out/blur enough, and there is no difference between the two, thus, no way to "backtrack" to the original image. There is a fundamental limit, and CSI routinely passes it.
You can play with contrast and brightness and sometimes retrieve a number or something. But your human eyes are already as good as you can expect at extracting a "3" from an image with suitable brightness and contrast. If you can't already see it, no magic algorithm is going to help. (I'm confident in this case our brains are close enough to optimal on this problem that no significant improvement can be made, even in theory, on still images.)