Name: Have you been fooled by forensics on TV? | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-09-06T19:10:27.000Z
Duration: 5 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Who doesn't know to wear gloves? Even criminals wear gloves.

Zoom and enhance images. That's never going to happen.

Please, if you make CSI-type programmes, stop doing it.

I think, probably, a lot of what you think about what happens

at a crime scene is determined by what you see on TV.

And oh my, the reality is so much different.

The reflection of the man's face. The reflection. There's a reflection.

There's a phenomenon related to forensic science

Legal professionals, in particular, started getting concerned that

that was affecting real people that were serving on juries in real cases.

Because TV is so immediate, you're actually seeing it,

They were concerned that if there wasn't the type of evidence in a case

that you would see on the TV that the jurors would think,

{\an2}"Well, it's a weak case." They were also concerned that

the presence of some evidence, even if it was fairly weak evidence,

would be seen by jurors as being very strong evidence because it's got the

word forensics in it, and forensics on TV means you've solved the case.

Forensic science is really any form of science that's applied to

the civil, sometimes, but usually criminal justice systems.

Physical forensics is physical items - blood, skin traces, hair, fibres...

that sort of thing. Digital forensics is things like phone records,

digital information as well, which will tell you, for example,

It's not used all the time. It is still slow.

There aren't always the resources that we need.

ARCHIVE: The advent of the electronic age has changed all that.

But there are still some things that we just cannot do.

Facial reconstruction is most of the time fiction, you can't say,

{\an2}"Oh this is the person," just from the skull.

This is just so much like... chunky bits.

Bite mark analysis, er, that's probably fiction.

Were you able to determine which monkey bit him?

The bite marks match those of the monkey found at the scene.

… which is usually quite a rubbish smudge mark ...

… to a whole set of fingerprints and trying to make a match.

Eight million people just in central London.

That's so many other people who can be prosecuted.

CLIP: Well it turns out his fortune can be read from his palms.

forensic evidence is circumstantial evidence.

Forensic science has said, "Yes, this person is present,"

does not necessarily mean that that person has committed the offence.

The Phantom of Heilbronn, it's a very interesting case.

I'll simplify this massively. The police were finding DNA traces

from an unknown person at a huge number of different crime scenes.

So many across Europe panicked law enforcement.

{\an2}"Have we got a serial killer on our hands here?"

DNA can only tell you what you ask it to tell you.

But what the data mean is always a matter of judgement.

Even if it is a suicide note, that doesn't mean it's a suicide.

I think there is possibly a tendency for people to want science

which is not really the case on TV shows.

It is important to establish both the certainty and the uncertainty.

I can kind of forgive the fast-forwarding of how long it takes

I think human beings are hardwired to find out what happened.

We all love secrets. We all love mysteries,

So are you happy for my answer to be, "It's both."

{\an2}"Hey, you've got that wrong. Let's put it right."

That's a tremendous advantage. And of course, if it can come in in

the first place and go, "Hey, don't get that wrong," that's even better.

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Subtitles ListPlay Video

Have you been fooled by forensics on TV? | BBC Ideas

phenomenon

extremely

present

physical