Factual error: Whenever someone uses an iPhone (which is the phone of choice on CSI:NY), the screen stays lit when talking on the phone. The iPhone has a sensor which dims the screen when you put it to your ear, but only if you're actually making a call.
Factual error: In the episode Recycling the woman with the knitting needle stated that she knits her dog things like the blanket he is sitting on. The blanket (a granny square blanket) is a crocheted blanket not knitted.
The Closer - S1-E22
Factual error: They are suppose to be in Yankee Stadium investigating the death of the man they found in his truck. But they are not in Yankee Stadium, the color and configuration of the seats are not correct, they are in the L.A. Coliseum.
Factual error: The plot is about a mosquito who stung the murderer. Although Gary Sinise mentions (correctly) that only female mosquitoes bite, the one caught alive on the table is a male mosquito (look at its bushy antennae and abdomen which is thin and definitely deflated). All mosquitoes used in the episode are male.
Youngblood - S2-E5
Factual error: When they are looking at footage of the suspect leaving the crime scene they notice something in his sleeve and the computer generates an image of a steering wheel lock. There is no way they could come up with that from the outline in the suspect's clothes.
Factual error: 2-20 Run Silent, Run Deep - They are suppose to be in Giants Stadium in NJ, but you can tell by the stadium configuration and color of the seats that they are in the L.A. Coliseum.
Factual error: When Mac Taylor's ID card from the Marine Corps is being shown, there are two unintentional mistakes and one probably intentional. First, the design of the ID card in no way resembles an actual DoD issued military ID, but this was probably an intentional mistake by the creators of the show. The picture on the ID however, has two unintentional mistakes. First, Marines are never photographed in their dress blues for official purposes; Mac would have been in cammies or service dress charlies for the photograph. Second, Mac is revealed in several episodes to have been an officer, yet he is shown wearing the dress blues of an enlisted man.
Factual error: Lessing is said to have tried to enter the Marine Corps three times but failed the psych test; no psych tests are given when entering the Marine Corps.
Not What It Looks Like - S3-E2
Factual error: Season 3, episode 49 (Not What It Looks Like). Breaking glass with sound is possible, but would not work as depicted in the episode. First, in order to break the glass, you have to force the glass to vibrate at its natural frequency - that is, the frequency at which it would vibrate if it were tapped. Each piece of glass has its own natural frequency, depending on a range of factors including size, chemical makeup, shape, hardness, and manufacturing methods. No single frequency would shatter all the glass in the store at the same time. Finally, in order to break the glass the piece has to be closed-ended. You can't shatter a plate of glass with sound (nowhere for the sound waves to resonate). Please see http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/feb98/887203231.Ph.r.html.
Not What It Looks Like - S3-E2
Factual error: Danny explains how the glass was broken using ultrasound waves to hit the glass at their resonant frequency. He explains it could be done using a mp3-file and a mp3-player. As mp3-players are designed for the human ear, the upper frequency limit is around 20 khz, far too low to produce a sound capable of shattering glass.
Factual error: During the autopsy of the head, the shot changes to inside the eye, showing the needle entering to extract the vitreous fluid. The inside of the eyeball is shown as white. This is incorrect: the inner lining of the eye is black (hence why the pupil, a hole in the iris, looks black).
Murder Sings The Blues - S3-E7
Factual error: Several police and crime lab personnel are in the train car looking at the dead girl and discussing the possibility that this death could be the result of a bio-hazard or chemical hazard. Later in the episode, ebola and anthrax were discussed. These are level 3/4 hazards which require Hazmat suits and oxygen supplies. At the very least, there should have been very serious access control to the scene. None of them are wearing any type of protective gear except rubber gloves, and there is nothing more than standard crime scene access control. Contrast this with a scene later in the same episode where 2 characters in the lab are wearing respirators when dealing with the dust and other stuff from vacuum cleaning system. If the CSI team or the police really suspected that there was a biohazard or dangerous chemical agent present at the crime scene, then their behaviour was quite cavalier under the circumstances.
And Here's To You, Mrs. Azrael - S3-E9
Factual error: They state that the heart monitor on "Nicole" never showed any movement at all as she was being smothered, because the killer swapped it out and put it on herself. When Mrs. Rollins was smothering her daughter thinking it was Nicole, her heart rate would have raced and her blood pressure would have gone up a little as she strained to hold the bag over her face. The monitor would have picked that up.
What Schemes May Come - S3-E20
Factual error: When Mac is using the mouse to demonstrate induced hibernation to Peyton, the speed of the mouse's heartbeat on the heart monitor was about that of a human. Due to their small size, real mice have an average heartbeat of 500-600 bpm, which is so fast it can sound like humming.
The Thing About Heroes - S4-E10
Factual error: "The Thing About Heroes" When Mac has a flashback to an incident when he was 14 years old (in the 1970s) and gives the money to Bobby Toole the twenty-dollar bills all have the large 20 on the back side. This was not issued until 2004.
Factual error: Mac is showing the air duct and saying that the fire would have traveled down the vent to the vacant apartment. The vent was shiny and new looking, when it should have been filled with black soot with the amount of fire that traveled down it.
Factual error: When Mac is held hostage until he can prove that the bank robber did not shoot the manager, he asks for a portable CT machine to be delivered. CT stands for computed tomography which is a machine that takes slice pictures of the body and puts them together to form a whole image. This is why a CT machine has a tube like quality to it, so it can take slice-like pictures around the body. When it arrives the machine is not a CT at all, but an ultrasound. This is made obvious when Mac uses the transducer probe (wand-like attachment) to scan the body. Anyone who has had any of these procedures done, or has seen them in TV shows, or knows how to search images on the internet can see the difference between these two very different machines.
Page Turner - S5-E2
Factual error: All the victims were supposedly killed using thalium-201 - a radioactive isotope with a half-life of just 72 hours. e.g.: In the space of two months there would be 10 nanograms for every gram applied to the source of the radiation poisoning (i.e the book) - not enough to make Sid ill without making the perp very ill. He would have had a much higher dose than anyone infected.
Factual error: The episode has a character in it called Klaus Braun ("Braun" being the German word for "brown"). However, all of the characters pronounce his surname wrong, saying the "au" like the "or" in "bored", not the proper German pronunciation, which would in fact, be the same as the English meaning, "Brown". Other German character's names were pronounced correctly, and surely Klaus/Abraham would object to having his name pronounced incorrectly.
Factual error: Season 5, episode 23 "Greater Good": A guy runs over a little girl in 2007. A flashback of the crime scene has Stella showing Mac a photo of the dead girl on a digital camera. The screen info shows 2009/3/25. Two years in the future?
Suggested correction: Theoretically correct, but it can be argued that the only evidence present is the bullet (which has DNA and prints burnt off when fired) and the body (which can only be handled by the MEs) gloves are not required.
Andy Benham ★
What utter rubbish. No CSI would enter a crime scene without first putting on latex gloves - it is a carved-in-stone rule.
Exactly. Since Mac, Stella and Danny were processing a crime scene, they would need to wear gloves because without them, they would have contaminated a crime scene by not only getting their fingerprints over everything but, if one of them got a cut or scrape, their DNA would also be thrown into the mix and any defense attorney can call them out on their carelessness and have any evidence thrown out.