CSI: Cross-Scene Investigation

What killed Jesus on that Good Friday cross? Our crime scene investigation points to a different set of causes.

Gorgeous, gory and glib.

It’s suddenly chic to be a science geek, or at least to play one on TV. Crime scene investigators are a hot-looking lot. Brainy beauty boys and babes with high-tech toys spend time tinkering in laboratories with cadavers and chemistry. They’re collecting clues, letting the evidence lead, and putting the baddies behind bars, and it’s all done in under an hour.

It must be a gas to fight crime while collecting unspeakable human fluids, encountering gruesome violence with dispassionate analysis, and to have new clothes for every show.

The CSI franchise (shows now set in Las Vegas, Miami and New York) has attracted so much attention among the viewing public that it’s having an impact in American courtrooms and classrooms. The programs have popularized the study of forensic science at universities nationwide, so much so that at the University of West Virginia, forensic science is the most popular major for a second year in a row.

The CSI...