Ep. 94: The Goofy Pseudoscience Copaganda of TV Forensics
Added 2019-11-27 14:45:38 +0000 UTCSince 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
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
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
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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Comments
Just gonna point out that "forensic" means anything relating to courts and court cases. This episode is about forensic science.
Coupcumber
2019-11-28 04:54:06 +0000 UTC
