For years, movies and television series like Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) paint an unrealistic picture of the “science of voices.” In the 1994 movie Clear and Present Danger an expert listens to a brief recorded utterance and declares that the speaker is “Cuban, aged 35 to 45, educated in the […] eastern United States.” The recording is then fed to a supercomputer that matches the voice to that of a suspect, concluding that the probability of correct identification is 90%. This sequence sums up a good number of misimpressions about forensic phonetics, which have led to errors in reallife justice. Indeed, that movie scene exemplifies the so-called “CSI effect”—the phenomenon in which judges hold unrealistic expectations of the capabilities of forensic science.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Correct Answer :
Movies and televisions have led to the belief that the use of forensic phonetics in legal investigations is robust and fool proof.
Solution :
The passage highlights how media representations of forensic phonetics create unrealistic expectations (the "CSI effect") and false impressions about the reliability and robustness of voice analysis in real-life justice systems. Option 2 best sums this up by stating that media has led to the belief that forensic phonetics is robust and foolproof.
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