Ep. 94: The Goofy Pseudoscience Copaganda of TV Forensics

Since the early 2000s, a spate of forensics-focused TV shows and films have emerged on the pop culture scene. Years after Law & Order premiered in the '90s, shows like CSI, NCIS, and The Mentalist followed, trumpeting the scientific merit of analyzing blood-spatter patterns, reading facial and bodily cues, and using the latest fingerprint-matching technology to catch the bad guy.

Yet what these procedurals neglect to acknowledge is that many of these popular forensic techniques are deeply unscientific and entirely political. Spatter pattern-matching, firearms analysis, hair analysis, fingerprint and bite mark analysis — they’re all mostly bullshit with little scientific merit. Despite this, forensics have helped contribute to the wrongful convictions of thousands of people: a storytelling aid, prosecutorial smoke and mirrors, a courtroom PR tool to lend scientific verisimilitude to what is very often just circumstantial, hunch-based police work.

On this episode, we break down how popular culture depictions of forensics helps mislead viewers — and by extension jurors — into thinking forensics are science that proves guilt rather than what they really are: slick marketing collateral to help prosecutors convict someone they already think is guilty for other, nonscientific reasons.

We are joined by Aviva Shen, Senior Editor at Slate.

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Guest

Aviva Shen is Senior Editor at Slate. Previously Senior Editor at ThinkProgress and The Appeal, her work has also appeared in The Guardian, CityLab, Scientific American, and Smithsonian Magazine.

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Show Notes

'We are going backward': How the justice system ignores science in the pursuit of convictions 

Jon Schuppe | January 23, 2019 | NBC News

N.Y.P.D. Detectives Gave a Boy, 12, a Soda. He Landed in a DNA Database.

Jan Ransom and Ashley Southall | August 15, 2019 | The New York Times

The Psychological Phenomena That Can Lead to Wrongful Convictions

November 18, 2018 | The Innocence Project

Faulty Forensics: Explained

Jessica Brand | May 4, 2018 | The Appeal

How an Unproven Forensic Science Spread Through the Criminal Justice System

Leora Smith | May 31, 2018 | ProPublica

How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus

Leora Smith | December 13, 2018 | ProPublica

Bite-Mark Matching Falsely Imprisoned These Men For Rape and Murder

Shayla Love | February 27, 2018 | VICE

A brief history of forensics

Radley Balko | April 21, 2015 | The Washington Post

FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades

Spencer S. Hsu | April 18, 2015 | The Washington Post

Why Fingerprints Aren't The Proof We Thought They Were 

Sue Russell | May 3, 2017 | Pacific Standard

Reading Faces

Richard Coniff | January 2004 | Smithsonian Magazine

Fingerprints: Not a Gold Standard

Jennifer Mnookin | Fall 2003 | Issues in Science and Technology

"The CSI Effect": Exposing the Media Myth

Kimberlianne Podlas | 2005 | Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

“The answers are always in the body”: forensic pathology in US crime programmes

Joseph Turow | December 1, 2004 | The Lancet

'CSI effect' has juries wanting more evidence

Richard Willing | August 5, 2004 | USA Today

Television's scales of justice tipping to prosecutors 

Mark Dawidziak | August 5, 2002 | Houston Chronicle

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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