This article explores the gap between the dramatized world of forensic science depicted in popular television shows like CSI and the reality experienced by forensic professionals. Experts highlight the discrepancies, emphasizing that real-life investigations involve meticulous collaboration and often lack the singular breakthroughs portrayed on screen.
This has become even clearer in recent years with the popularity of long-running television crime shows like CSI : Crime Scene Investigation and Silent Witness.As a forensic pathologist, Dr Iles says her role is to determine what happened rather than who committed the crime.
She points out there have been some famous real-life CSI moments in forensic entomology that now "don't stack up".For example, the Sung Tzu case in 1247 was one of the first examples of forensic entomology.Following the murder of a farmer, a local judge ordered that everyone in the village lay down their farming tools.
Then the anthropology examination takes place at the mortuary in consultation with the forensic pathologist."Most of the time if the remains are skeletonised … the anthropologist will then look at a number of different features on the bones to answer a range of different questions," Dr Robotham says.
Dr Iles is an expert in brain injuries and conducts neuropathological examinations via CT scans and MRI. "If you're in a house, you would be looking potentially in cupboards and under carpet and in detritus … just trying to make sure that you find all those little hiding maggots or pupae and potentially even remnants left by dead insects that have been feeding on the body at some time in the past," Dr Archer says.
"That's probably a reflection of fiction because anthropologists are normally very fabulous in fiction at giving exact causes of death and all these sorts of things that do not happen in real life," she says.
Forensic Science CSI Reality Vs Fiction Forensic Pathologists Entomology
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