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?"

Comments

you know you're a geek when...

[fireduck]

watching a CSI episode you notice the box of Diamond Evolution One gloves on the bench and think "good choice, those are my favorites, as well..."

I love the CSI, although I came to in way late. Nice thing is that Spike TV shows 2 reruns back to back at 7 each night.

Re:you know you're a geek when...

[reverseengineer]

I personally like CSI, though I only catch it once in a while. As an analytical chemist, I can often tell whether the forensic science is legit on CSI or a similar show, and while CSI is far from being completely realistic, I usually cut it slack because the errors tend to be matters of degree rather than utter fabrications. I mean, they could have just written a magical "crimeputer" into the show where evidence goes in one end and the name of the guilty party prints out at the other. Instead, they do make an effort to get science right, but with the caveat that sometimes the science must be squeezed into the storytelling. For shows like CSI, but also for detective shows in general, the case needs to be wrapped up within an episode (or 2 for the big To Be Continued... episodes popular around sweeps). So just as a show like "Law and Order" usually fast forwards through the more mundane legal proceedings in order to get to the dramatic clinching testimony and verdict, CSI makes complicated assays take minutes instead of hours or days so they can hurry to the point where the investigators march up to the suspect with infallible evidence in hand. It's marketed as entertainment, I can understand that- if anything, I think the science can serve as a starting point for viewers, who after the show just might google for some technique they saw and actually learn something.

They at least talk about doing real things like Western blots and mass spec- once while flipping channels I caught a minute of Navy NCIS where someone mentioned doing an ELISA. In particular, these shows tend to do a nice job of explaining the principles behind a test while they perform it- occasionally I learn new things, though occasionally there will be something explained where I'm thinking, "um, it's not exactly how you say,"- I'm sure the same is true for medical professionals who watch "ER," cops who watch "NYPD Blue," etc. Now, once again, I say that as a chemist- people in other fields may have more of an issue with how their work is represented on such shows- for one, I'm sure that as is usual for television, the capabilities and use of computers are misrepresented. What personally bugs me more than the science itself on CSI and its ilk is the budget that these crime labs seem to have. If anything, these shows might give people the idea that forensics labs have infinite time, money, and resources to ensure justice is done in each and every case.

It'd be nice, though, if once in a while they'd use a couple of minutes at the end of the show to mention real forensics and the shortcuts they took during the episode- and possibly mention that in reality, sometimes the results are inconclusive, even if everyone did their jobs right.

Oh, and second the parent- Diamond Evolution One are some nice gloves- though I prefer the MicroGrip purple nitriles myself.

CSI isn't bad

[siskbc]

As a chemist who's had a little forensics training, the science is not bad.

As for the submitter's question, eyewitness accounts are usually the absolute worst forms of evidence. It's especially bad when the witness doesn't actually know the defendant.

And I would say relevations regarding the liberties taken by cops with the Bill of Rights and Miranda have shaken faith in confessions more than shows like CSI have.

I'd say that having juries full of self-styled experts based on TV knowledge ain't great. But it's better than it was in the 90's, when you could snow over a jury with science evidence debate they don't understand. Used to be an easy way to get reasonable doubt.

All in all, I don't think education is a bad thing, and as I said CSI doesn't do a bad job. As long as the juries don't think they're experts, it should be OK.

Re:Overall, it's good

[schwep]

If nothing else, it at least makes people that would have been otherwise unaware of some aspects of science aware of it.

One shortcoming (other than "infinite resolution") is that they rarely have a case where there isn't a clear offender or group of offenders - so people aren't used to the more "muddied" reality of the world we live in. That said, no clear offender reduces the enjoyment of watching a bit.

How many of these positions are there?

[Life2Short]

As a faculty member at a small college, I cannot believe how many prospective and first year students approach me and tell me they are interested in forensic psychology, criminal profiling, etc.. How many of these jobs are actually out there? Aren't there only a few criminal profilers in the entire FBI? Is there any reason to expect that the number of job opportunities in this area are going to increase in the coming years? Fortunately college-level chemistry courses have a way of weeding out students quite quickly... If I had a penny for every poor pre-med student who took organic chemistry and then showed up in my office to ask me about psychology as a possible major... Heck, the only reason I went into Psychlogy was because of the old Bob Newhart show. I thought it would be great to be married to Suzanne Pleshette and live in downtown Chicago...

Good

[saddino]

worry about juries that refuse to accept eyewitness accounts

Eyewitness accounts are notoriously innacurate and misleading. A number of studies have found that people who witness criminal situations (and hence are under stress) cannot remember (and can even "invent" specifics about) the incidents.

or even outright confessions,

Confessions are also not reliable. Once again, under stress, an individual can be suggested to confess to thing he or she has not done (which is why you should take advantage of your rights and stay silent until your lawyer is present). A number of the cases that have recently been overturned by DNA evidence involved confessions. Yet years later we can prove these people are innocent.

If these CSI-educated juries are prone to be more cautious in making decisions about guilt, then IMO it's probably a good thing.

Re:Grade

[sgant]

I only saw the first two episodes of CSI:New York and just couldn't take it anymore. I mean, is it set like 10 years in the future or something because they're using technology that doesn't exist yet. And I guess the NYPD has one of the most sophisticated computer systems in the world! In one episode they were trying to triangulate the location of where a photograph was taken. They scanned in the photo of this girl with the skyline behind them. They simply clicked on the Empire State building and it gave them the exact hight, then they clicked on another building and the same thing happened, then they input the height of the girl and with a complete detailed 3D model of Manhattan they flew/zoomed to the exact address of where the photo was taken. Amazing. I hate crap like that.

I mean, wouldn't it have been more interesting/dramatic if they looked at the photo, saw the skyline and one of the cops opens a book with the heights of buildings and does some writing on a scrap of paper and then looks at a wall map. One of the other cops could have said "what are you doing, how can you find her like that?" and the other cop could say "didn't you ever take Trig in high school?". Believable and real. Also, another episode they were able to track a rat that swallowed a bullet with a hand held scanner ala Total Recall....I shit you not...

Now, the original CSI doesn't seem to do as much of this. Granted it has a little, but it's more believable.

Re:Genuine Fractals 3.5

[lakeland]

You're 100% correct (of course). But try playing with some of the best software out there sometime.

It is really amazing just how much information is in the low-res source file, encoded as slight changes in colour values. And the best software does an unbelieveable job of extracting that (making huge guesses along the way). Sure, the guesses do mean it will get it totally wrong occasionally and show things that were never there, but most of the time they're right.

Re:Grade

[Andy Dodd]

I recall in at least one episode of the original CSI, Warrick wanted to use some nifty "electronic nose" device that was on loan from some company. Grissom made him do it the "old-fashioned" way for budget reasons.

Re:Full of bad science

[javaxman]

I know a couple of people who are really into forensics. Honest, I swear, it's not me, it's just the crowd I hang out with. They do stuff like take classes in forensics, just for fun, even though they aren't part of any degree program. Total sickos. I love 'em, and would find the stuff just as interesting if I didn't have some strange aversion to dead bodies.

Anyway, my friends took a lecture series on forensics, and came back after every session talking about how much time each guest speaker put into informing the class of just how wrong CSI is about so very many very basic, important things.

The science on the show is junk. Almost nothing is right- it's wrong way more often than right.

Just one blatant example? It's apparently really, really, really, really difficult to estimate time of death from a body alone. On these shows, they pretend to be able to estimate TOD very accurately. It's a joke, except that it sets up people to expect a real-life forensics expert to do things they can't possibly do.

So, in the final analysis, it's a double-edged sword, but it's more bad than good, just because it spreads soooo much disinformation, without enough warning that "the science in this show is fake, fake, fake; you won't learn anything true; don't believe a thing you see here, this is written by a TV show hack without review for technical validity of any kind". Really, it should have that kind of warning, the science to these shows is so far off.

Re:Genuine Fractals 3.5

[Anonymous Coward]

http://refocus-it.sourceforge.net/

Re:Infinite Resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

ACtually, you'd be surprised at how much you can recover with video footage. Six pixels isn't much, but if it's the image is pixelised slightly differently every frame (say the car is moving...), then, with sufficiently advanced (nearly magic...) _video_ processing filters, one can recover a license plate from a video stream where in any single frame the license plate is only a few pixels...

You can try it yourself, with your brain as the sufficiently advanced filter: find a tiny pixelated video of a moving object, and compare your perception of the object to a single frame from the video. There's more information there. Information that specialist software can recover and reconstruct higher-resolution images from!

Re:Grade

[plover]

Amazing. I hate crap like that.

Personally, I love crap like that. Because it's cool to demonstrate to people that such software exists today.

Think about it -- how difficult is that software to write? You just described its functional specifications and wrapped them in a single paragraph, including complaints. Sure, it would need to be customized on a city-by-city basis, but for a city the size of New York it wouldn't be impossible.

As a matter of fact, I thought the whole idea was so cool I just now googled for more info. I found searching for the terms AeroTriangulation found a few software vendors who have products that combine maps and photos. Rockware seems to sell a lot of it. And I remembered that in a previous Slashdot story that there's a company performing a photolocation service! Here's the article.

So, isn't it actually even cooler that the technology you reported them using was actually lower tech than the current state of the art in photolocation software? In reality nobody has to click on the Empire State Building, because the software already recognizes it! How cool is that?

Yeah, their tech editors suck

[loraksus]

Every time they bring up wifi or computers, I wince.

Very few, and most part time

[stryders]

I took a class in forensic anthropology one summer as an elective. The professor had a Master's degree from the University of TN, and was the forensic anthropologist for a huge swath of western NY (at least a few million in population, not to mention lots of lakes a forests for things to be found in). Her day job was as a pathologist's assistant, because she only worked as a forensic anthropologist a few days a month when there was something to be done. Sure there were several full-time so called CSI's but they usually did very boring stuff.

Re:Doesn't always happen

[saider]

CSI is Scooby Doo for adults. I hate the fact that every single room has mood lighting and every line has to be dramatic. How do they see anything with the lights off?

It started out pretty good. The sets were nice, the hallways looked like a typical government building and they would have those impromptu meetings in the breakroom. It had a much better "workplace" feel to it. Now they work in their decorated offices that are _huge_ and filled with specimens instead of the normal, two guys to an office with white walls and flourescent lights (maybe a fake plant for some greenery).

They are trying to make every moment dramatic with lighting and script. Adding David Caruso to the cast is evidence of this. That guy does not have an off switch. I know nobody who acts like that - even the primadonnas in the lab laugh and spit food and behave like a human being most of the time. I don't watch CSI-Miami for that reason.

I think they should also show it more like how they typically work - with multiple cases going on. The character might have one thats in court, one or two in the lab waiting on results, and a new one that they are getting assigned.

The drama (and plot) should come from the interaction of the characters, not the science. The science should just be an interesting side show. When they started putting the science as the lead character, the show lost its appeal. If I want science, I'll watch Nova. I do not trust Hollywood with scientific accuracy.

Anyway, enough CSI bashing. CSI is on - Gotta go!

Re:Grade

[zuzulo]

Just because the vast majority of cameras out there are crappy analog stuff does not mean that there are not high quality cameras available. I routinely store large quantities of high quality digital surveillance video from cameras that have high enough resolution to read your licence plate clearly at 25 ft in low light conditions and enough frames per second to catch at least one usable frame of any vehicle passing through.

Las Vegas has the most well defined standards for legally admissable surveillance footage, and for them 3-5 frames per second is acceptable. We routinely use and store locally 10-18 frames per second. The metric generally goes something like this:

real time feed: 10-30+ fps
local disk storage: 5-18 fps
local internet feed: 5-10 fps with 1-2 sec latency
remote internet feed: 3-5 fps with 5-10 sec latency
remote disk archive: 3-5 fps

Since the high quality stuff is digital and you have multiple frames of relevant data you can also do some fairly interesting processing to enhance image quality by interpolation. And some other nice tricks, some of which work in real time. And once you have digital video on disk there are lots of other interesting things you can do. Which is all i can really say about that. ;-)

In any case, the automated video surveillance stuff is improving quite quickly these days.