“It amuses me when people wring their hands about a crisis in getting school children interested in science,”says Barry Fisher. “Forensics does that. It is a positive side effect.”

Ambassador for Science? 

Fisher is director of the crime laboratory for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a national spokesman for forensic scientists. He makes his comment in a new Expert Voices blog called Science on TV. The blog is about a recent explosion of entertainment programs with scientists in starring roles, the effect these programs are having on students, and the ambivalent feelings that real scientists sometimes have about being portrayed by sexy actors. Fisher puts his finger on it when he points out that the public’s fascination with forensic science began with O. J. Simpson. Few people want to be associated with O.J., but millions of ordinary Americans learned about DNA sampling and other scientific techniques by watching his trial on TV 12 years ago.

Naren Shankar, who acquired a Ph.D in applied physics before becoming a writer and producer for the CBS mega-hit “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” says in the blog that the appeal of his show comes from its emphasis on the power of empirical analysis. “People love to know how things work, and they like to be taken into those roles,” he says. “That’s why we push the camera into carpet fibers and through cadavers. Going into things is part of the appeal.”

Some digital education providers have already jumped on the bandwagon. An archived Expert Voices blog called Boneyard Science: Investigating Forensics has lots of interesting links, and a new site called Eforensics is being developed by the Eskeletons team at the University of Texas. The forensics theme was everywhere at the National Science Teachers Association meeting this year, and the teachers we spoke with said they were packaging chemistry and physics lessons as crime investigations because their students had gotten all jazzed up by “CSI.” So what’s the problem?

“A few years ago, when I was president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, I pleaded with the National Science Foundation to focus more on the field,” says Fisher. “I got nowhere. Some high-up NSF guy said to me, ‘forensic science is not real science. We’re only involved in real science.’ And even now, the number of forensics research projects at NSF is close to zero.” It’s an old problem: pure research looks down on applied research and is reluctant to associate with it. But if Americans have a desperate need to make a new generation of scientists and forensics is sparking their interest, shouldn’t pure science types just get over it? Please log in and leave us your comments.