- Joined
- Feb 22, 1999
- Messages
- 3,357
Last night, on a rerun of CBS' forensic police science drama (!) CSI, the show's protagonists investigate a multiple-victim stabbing in which only the very tip of the murder weapon was found.
Taking the knife tip to some sort of knife dealing "expert," our heroes watch in fascination as he displays total, utter ignorance of knife technology. (Which makes me wonder -- how much of the "science" on this show is equally flawed?)
The "expert" takes the tip and examines it. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this; I may have the exact order wrong, but I'm including everything that struck me as faulty:
"This isn't a knife," he says, "it's symmetrical and ground on both sides in a diamond cross section. This is a dagger. That means it's either carbon steel or stainless steel."
[What would the other choices be in a metal knife, anyway? Aluminum?]
He sprays lemon juice on the tip, which immediately discolors and adopts a blackened patina. "Carbon steel," he pronounces.
He then puts the tip on a piece of paper and uses a ruler to draw lines at the angles of the tip's edges. "Daggers are seldom more than an inch at the base," he says, "so we can estimate the length this way."
So far nothing seems that unrealistic, right?
Well, our "expert" determines that this carbon steel dagger has a five-inch blade. He then goes to his knife case -- which bears several knives, seen quickly, among them a Hibben piece, if I remember correctly -- and immediately pulls out the only five inch dagger in the world: A stainless steel Rigid boot knife.
"That's the one," he says with utter finality.
So what have we learned from CSI?
1. Daggers aren't knives.
2. What makes daggers unique and different from knives is that they're either carbon steel or stainless steel.
3. Lemon juice discolors a carbon steel blade immediately, instantaneously on contact.
3. The only five-inch dagger in the world is Rigid's boot knife, and it must be made of carbon steel, even though the box says otherwise.
4. Rigid's boot knife (excuse me, dagger) is so common, being the only five-inch dagger in the world, that any knife seller has one on hand.
Granted, these are small things -- and there was no obvious anti-knife bias in the episode, no rolled eys and comments of, "Why can people just buy these dreadful things without a permit?" Still, what bothered me was that this one little segment was deeply flawed in its supposedly scientific reasoning, and on a show that is devoted to forensic science, somebody's really, really not doing their homework.
Makes you wonder why anyone ever believes a thing they see on TV, but there you have it...
Anyway, I'm off to buy a Rigid boot knife.
Taking the knife tip to some sort of knife dealing "expert," our heroes watch in fascination as he displays total, utter ignorance of knife technology. (Which makes me wonder -- how much of the "science" on this show is equally flawed?)
The "expert" takes the tip and examines it. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this; I may have the exact order wrong, but I'm including everything that struck me as faulty:
"This isn't a knife," he says, "it's symmetrical and ground on both sides in a diamond cross section. This is a dagger. That means it's either carbon steel or stainless steel."
[What would the other choices be in a metal knife, anyway? Aluminum?]
He sprays lemon juice on the tip, which immediately discolors and adopts a blackened patina. "Carbon steel," he pronounces.
He then puts the tip on a piece of paper and uses a ruler to draw lines at the angles of the tip's edges. "Daggers are seldom more than an inch at the base," he says, "so we can estimate the length this way."
So far nothing seems that unrealistic, right?
Well, our "expert" determines that this carbon steel dagger has a five-inch blade. He then goes to his knife case -- which bears several knives, seen quickly, among them a Hibben piece, if I remember correctly -- and immediately pulls out the only five inch dagger in the world: A stainless steel Rigid boot knife.
"That's the one," he says with utter finality.
So what have we learned from CSI?
1. Daggers aren't knives.
2. What makes daggers unique and different from knives is that they're either carbon steel or stainless steel.
3. Lemon juice discolors a carbon steel blade immediately, instantaneously on contact.
3. The only five-inch dagger in the world is Rigid's boot knife, and it must be made of carbon steel, even though the box says otherwise.
4. Rigid's boot knife (excuse me, dagger) is so common, being the only five-inch dagger in the world, that any knife seller has one on hand.
Granted, these are small things -- and there was no obvious anti-knife bias in the episode, no rolled eys and comments of, "Why can people just buy these dreadful things without a permit?" Still, what bothered me was that this one little segment was deeply flawed in its supposedly scientific reasoning, and on a show that is devoted to forensic science, somebody's really, really not doing their homework.
Makes you wonder why anyone ever believes a thing they see on TV, but there you have it...
Anyway, I'm off to buy a Rigid boot knife.
Seems to me that these pseudo-dramas should have a similar warning... "Please understand that this show is a work of FFIICCTTIONN and bears no weight in any 'real' situation whatsoever so viewers should NOT make decisions based on information seen here." 
