In article ,
Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:17:07 -0700, Larry Bud
wrote:

A pretty good job? I mean, I like the show. Pretty graphics, cool
special effects, but science? No way.

I disagree. I rarely see serious scientific errors on CSI (Las Vegas).

Are you kidding me? They've done the "infinite zoom" thing repeatedly on
the Vegas show, just like the other two CSI shows, where they take some
grainy security camera footage and zoom in to read a clothing label or a
note in a person's hand or some other ridiculous thing.

And the Las Vegas Crime Lab seems to have a database for everything. I
about fell off my couch laughing one night when Stokes took a sofa upon
which a body was found and ran it through their "furniture database",
which not only instantly told him the exact make and model of the sofa,
but the exact store it was sold out of, when it was sold, and to whom.

But the real inaccuracies in the Vegas show (as well as the NY and Miami
shows) comes not in the science but in the law. The 4th, 5th and 6th
Amendments to the Constitution apparently do not exist in the world of
CSI.

They use the right techniques, and they
use the right equipment.

Not really. For example, they put all their evidence in see-through
plastic bags. That's not a good way to, for example, preserve
fingerprint evidence:

The use of clear envelopes because plastic can have
an adverse affect on the future development of latent
prints on items of evidence. The introduction of
excessive heat and humidity and the friction of evidence
against the clear plastic can have an adverse affect
on latent print development. Light, which permeates the
clear plastic, can also result in the degradation of
latent prints. Additionally, the American Society of
Crime Laboratory Directors / Laboratory Accreditation
Board requires that latent print evidence be stored
in paper envelopes (as is the generally accepted method).