You know what irritates me.
These forensic shows on TV. I mean. I love watching them, don't get me wrong. I mean I even have 3 seasons of Bones on DVD. Of course not, I am joking, I may have torrents but.
Anyhow the thing that bugs me the most is this . Investigators find unknown substance stuck to victims nose hair. 3 hours later techs have carried out "analysis" on the "GC-MS" and will tell you all kinds of things about this previously unknown substance such as its name, billing address, mother's maiden name and social security number.

As someone who has had many sleepless nights developing a method for analysis using a GC-MS. It makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry. Here is a small note to those who write these shows.

Dear fornicators.

Do you even know how difficult it is to develop new methods of analysis for known compounds let alone unknown compounds. You could take 6 months varying all kinds of parameters to get the extraction, derivatization , GC-MS operating settings and all that just perfect, and you still will fuck up. There was this funny, charming and handsome researcher who was trying to develop a method to analyze an equally charming substance., who worked for six months on getting this right. He was getting decent recovery for samples of concentration 100 ng/L to 500 ng/L anything above and below..sorry not happening. And note, yes ng nano gram not fucking mg.
Plus very rarely will you find the same chappie in a lab coat that will carry out this analysis, be able to tell you that the maggots you found in the victim's rectum masturbated thrice daily after feeding on flesh(the maggots- not the chap in the straitjacket labcoat) and solve that unfinished theorem left on the murdered physicist's black board and hack into the NSA database all while juggling spent shell casings while bonking the hot waitress from the diner while playing MMORPGs . Scientists aren't supermen. Even if some of us think we are, and wear our underpants over our trousers. We can't do everything. Most of us can barely understand stuff that is out side our fields of specialization. What this does is make people ask us, "Hey! I found this packet of white powder in my house, can you put it in your 'GC-MS' and tell me what it is?". This causes us to have responses like "let me tell you what you can do with this powder, try dissolving it in some alcohol, if it dissolves, inject it into your veins. If you get high...proceed as normal. If you die, my problem is solved". I don't like orange jumpsuits very much.

Thanks.

Signed
Prisoner 56542
Rikers Island.