A friend of mine recently posted a link on my Facetube page regarding this crash course certifying one as a 'forensic consultant' and supposedly qualifying one to appear as an expert witness; an 'honor' generally granted to actual (degree holding) scientists specializing in ballistics, forensic anthropology, DNA fingerprinting, etc. I am quite sure everyone is familiar with forensic science (thanks to CSI, Bones, Dexter, and numerous other crime dramas). And yes, I also watch the aforementioned shows, except CSI (I can't really think of a reason why, I just don't). I follow Bones and Dexter very closely and I really like Dexter, although that love has waned since the 5th and 6th season. But I still admire the shows style and construction.
I take great pride in the fact that unlike most people I did not first get introduced to these shows through television. The privilege was denied to me after my father noticed I spent too much time watching Cartoon Network as a child and he unsubscribed to cable TV. Now basic television in America is orders of magnitude superior to basic TV in India. In India, the only channel really free is Doordarshan, a government run network, which has programming that is probably one of the reasons for all the crying and miserable children in the rural parts of India (right after poverty, starvation, disease and corruption). Finally abandoning trying to view their dismal attempts at creating educational and entertainment shows, I gave up watching TV and occasionally entertained myself with the couple of VHS tapes of Tom and Jerry cartoons my dad had recorded some long time ago (I still love those despite the fact that I now realize how blatantly racist some of them are, but hey Top Gear is racist too and not too many thousands of people complain about that).
Anyways, so when I came to America, I discovered internet TV, starting with the Simpsons, but didn't really watch any other shows until I took this class on Forensic Anthropology in my second year here. There I heard about shows called Bones and CSI and Dexter. The point of the class was to actually show that these shows are quite inaccurate. Forensic evidence is not in fact collected, analyzed and confirmed in the span of a few days, and the city, even an American city does not have the funds to hire a dozen forensic specialists. Apparently the entire Los Angeles county has one forensic anthropologist in its employ (or I think she's the medical examiner or something). Anyways this forensic anthropologist or medical examiner is,unfortunately, also the one who teaches the advanced forensics course at ASU (which is why I have never seen it being offered in the past 2-3 years despite my persistent search). I am quite sure that badly decomposed or mutilated corpses don't show up on a daily basis as portrayed in TV shows, and cases, for the most part, are either open and shut or forever open (the latter is possibly quite frequent).
However, to talk about what I mentioned in the first few lines of this post, I think that this "forensic crash course" is just another way of exploiting people's rising interest in this stuff because of TV. I took a 4 month, 200-level college course in forensic anthropology and I was simultaneously learning molecular biology and the very details of the genome. I am also learning osteology right now. And I learned the basics of forensic science, eg. how to distinguish a point blank gunshot wound from one fired at very close range and when a captive bolt gun has been used (a gunshot wound and a captive bolt gun wound can look similar but there's a sure sign to tell one from the other). Despite the fact that I can thoroughly impress someone who doesn't have much knowledge of this stuff, I am pretty certain that if I am taken to an actual crime scene, I would know as much as an officer on his first day on the job or perhaps even less. Maybe a person can learn all that in 1 day, but trust me he will not be anywhere close to an expert. Its just a fun thing you can do and give someone a wad of money for a pretty meaningless certificate.
Nevertheless, forensic science is very interesting, if you are not repulsed by the thought of dissecting decomposing corpses (a body is decomposed almost to the bone in about 2 weeks after death and it starts just a few hours after death unlike the chicken you forgot on the counter the previous evening). There are 100s of species of flies/maggots that infest a body within a few days starting at a few hours. Bodies even explode in a few days if they freely decompose (you might remember this scene from Bones). Needless to say TV heavily censors crime scene depiction. If you are the kind of person who looks up real crime scene photos on the internet (well firstly, there's something probably very wrong with you), you know what I am talking about. I am very certain that about 90% of the audience of crime dramas would promptly vomit if they see an actual corpse (let alone the smell; that would probably make me nauseous too since I have never been granted that pleasure). The point is forensics sounds interesting but I certainly cannot believe that any person could qualify to work in it.
I take great pride in the fact that unlike most people I did not first get introduced to these shows through television. The privilege was denied to me after my father noticed I spent too much time watching Cartoon Network as a child and he unsubscribed to cable TV. Now basic television in America is orders of magnitude superior to basic TV in India. In India, the only channel really free is Doordarshan, a government run network, which has programming that is probably one of the reasons for all the crying and miserable children in the rural parts of India (right after poverty, starvation, disease and corruption). Finally abandoning trying to view their dismal attempts at creating educational and entertainment shows, I gave up watching TV and occasionally entertained myself with the couple of VHS tapes of Tom and Jerry cartoons my dad had recorded some long time ago (I still love those despite the fact that I now realize how blatantly racist some of them are, but hey Top Gear is racist too and not too many thousands of people complain about that).
Anyways, so when I came to America, I discovered internet TV, starting with the Simpsons, but didn't really watch any other shows until I took this class on Forensic Anthropology in my second year here. There I heard about shows called Bones and CSI and Dexter. The point of the class was to actually show that these shows are quite inaccurate. Forensic evidence is not in fact collected, analyzed and confirmed in the span of a few days, and the city, even an American city does not have the funds to hire a dozen forensic specialists. Apparently the entire Los Angeles county has one forensic anthropologist in its employ (or I think she's the medical examiner or something). Anyways this forensic anthropologist or medical examiner is,unfortunately, also the one who teaches the advanced forensics course at ASU (which is why I have never seen it being offered in the past 2-3 years despite my persistent search). I am quite sure that badly decomposed or mutilated corpses don't show up on a daily basis as portrayed in TV shows, and cases, for the most part, are either open and shut or forever open (the latter is possibly quite frequent).
However, to talk about what I mentioned in the first few lines of this post, I think that this "forensic crash course" is just another way of exploiting people's rising interest in this stuff because of TV. I took a 4 month, 200-level college course in forensic anthropology and I was simultaneously learning molecular biology and the very details of the genome. I am also learning osteology right now. And I learned the basics of forensic science, eg. how to distinguish a point blank gunshot wound from one fired at very close range and when a captive bolt gun has been used (a gunshot wound and a captive bolt gun wound can look similar but there's a sure sign to tell one from the other). Despite the fact that I can thoroughly impress someone who doesn't have much knowledge of this stuff, I am pretty certain that if I am taken to an actual crime scene, I would know as much as an officer on his first day on the job or perhaps even less. Maybe a person can learn all that in 1 day, but trust me he will not be anywhere close to an expert. Its just a fun thing you can do and give someone a wad of money for a pretty meaningless certificate.
Nevertheless, forensic science is very interesting, if you are not repulsed by the thought of dissecting decomposing corpses (a body is decomposed almost to the bone in about 2 weeks after death and it starts just a few hours after death unlike the chicken you forgot on the counter the previous evening). There are 100s of species of flies/maggots that infest a body within a few days starting at a few hours. Bodies even explode in a few days if they freely decompose (you might remember this scene from Bones). Needless to say TV heavily censors crime scene depiction. If you are the kind of person who looks up real crime scene photos on the internet (well firstly, there's something probably very wrong with you), you know what I am talking about. I am very certain that about 90% of the audience of crime dramas would promptly vomit if they see an actual corpse (let alone the smell; that would probably make me nauseous too since I have never been granted that pleasure). The point is forensics sounds interesting but I certainly cannot believe that any person could qualify to work in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment