Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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...
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.
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?
John