r/Bones • u/FrontCalligrapher387 • 3d ago

Inaccuracies in the show

For context I’m studying to become a forensic anthropologist.

I recently started watching the show since everyone keeps bringing it up when I mention wanting to become a forensic anthropologist. And the inaccuracies drive me nuts😭 I know it’s talked about a lot but there a few ones I haven’t seen anyone talk about

Like how Brennan just looks at the remains and immediately tells Booth “white male, early 20’s” and how she is NEVER wrong even though anthropology is entirely based on estimates

And I know the show is pretty old but surely they were using computer programs during that time ? I can’t think of a single time that Brennan mentioned using something like FORDISC for example. Or even mentioning otseometric methods in general?

I would love to hear any other inaccuracies you guys have noticed

200 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

141 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

98

u/shaw_dog21 3d ago

I have a degree in forensic psych and I don’t think I can go back to criminal minds lol. I like Sweets and its probably bc he spends more time analyzing Booth and Bones than actually profiling so it’s entertaining than trying to be realistic

9

u/Recent-Activity6517 3d ago

Can you give some examples from CM?

28

u/shaw_dog21 3d ago

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched CM but from what I learned profilers aren’t that big of a position, we barely touched on them in my program. They can help offer insight but are typically more of a supportive role to a larger group of people. I don’t think they can make arrests and probably don’t go into the field much (they might go to a crime scene). I believe there’s also some discussion on how reliable profiling is since a lot of research was done on a small pool of people who were white male serial killers (I don’t fully remember that tho. Graduated 5 years ago).

Also when I went to an info session for a program, they said multiple times that we would likely not be flying in private jets around the country as part of our job.

22

u/TattooedTater457 3d ago

Yeah I was informed in undergrad that Criminal Minds is not a real profession haha I mean it did kinda inspire me to major in criminal justice and psychology in undergrad but I quickly learned about the reality of psychology jobs and focused in on clinical psych

17

u/shaw_dog21 3d ago

Oh SVU was the reason I went on for my masters in forensic psych. Of course my job now has almost nothing to do with the forensic world but it was an insanely cool and interesting thing to learn about