What do you mean TV isn't real life?

[pbray]

The media has once again discovered that real life isn't the same as TV, as USA Today breathlessly reports that CSI isn't an accurate representation of police forensics.

The article was inspired by the report from the National Academy of Sciences to Congress on the state of forensics and use of evidence in this country. The press release from NAS and audio of their briefing can be found here or you can listen to the story on NPR. Much of what is in the report reflects concerns that have been raised before, but this is a sweeping indictment of the overall system.

Comments

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

Huh, and silly me though the (only ep I watched) in which they had a computer program in which they placed a pic on the scanner and loaded it onto the screen - without scanning it - and typed in the command "run aging.exe" and it aged the picture the exact number of years they wanted it too (24) was REAL.

*shakes fist* damn them!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Though much of what they show is theoretically possible (although it would take longer for results and involve many more steps), but there's a big difference between what's theoretically possible with access to the best equipment and most highly trained staff, and what's going to happen in a real world situation where they can't invest tens of thousands of dollars of resources on every case.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

... not to mention the convenient way in which every episode shows no more than two (2) cases under investigation at the same time. What are the odds that any crime lab with sufficient caseload to justify all those bells and whistles would have only one or two open cases at a time?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

NCIS is even worse--they generally work on one case at a time, with a single forensic tech who has somehow mastered every discipline. And both the tech and medical examiner never seem to have any other teams to support or backlog of their own, instead they're always instantly ready to start work whenever a new case arrives.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

HA! I've never watched NCIS -- I can't get past the fact that it's called "Navy NCIS" (shallow, I know :^P) -- but that's really hilarious.

And, of course, everyone involved is always improbably good-looking ;^).