Well, wonder no longer!
Because Bones is to 'Bone of Contention', what real life is to Bones. Seriously.
That's why I love-hate episodes like this. Watching such an episode, where things are being comically over-done, where an average viewer is able - without any specialist knowledge - to roll their eyes at how unrealistic, blown out of proportion this thing is; for people 'in the know' (as in, people who actually work in the sector any given tv show is based on) watching such an episode is somewhat ironic. On one hand, you get to enjoy, along with everyone else, the contrast this setting provides. But on the other hand, you get slapped with the irony of the situation at full force.
For the non-scientist viewers, it might seem like Bones is quite realistic, science-wise (disregarding Angela-tron, holographic displays and such). Based on books by a real anthropologist, it stands to reason it would be grounded in science, right?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, because the anthropology side is quite legit, as far as a chemist can tell. The bodies are meticulously made and methodology is always solid. I really enjoy this part of the show.
However, the issue is the analytical side, as well as all the 'bows and whistles' that follow, as in: their lab spaces, the analytical processess they use, and the worst offender - acquiring, presentation and analysis of the results. These.. these make my eye twitch. Especially every time Hodgins says he found some 'hydrocarbons' (which is as descriptive - skipping over its correctness because I don't have the whole day - as saying he just found some 'air').
Fun fact: there is NOT a piece of analytical equipment that is able to take an unknown sunstance in and tell you its chemical composition (unles it's a single crystal and then you can use Single-Crystal X-Ray Diffraction to find out the structure) . Really, there simply isn't. I know it sounds wrong, but it's the honest-to-god truth. Mass-spec (what Hodgins loves to use) can tell you molecular mass of a compound, as well as masses of some fragments - that's IT. And that's if you have a pure substance to analyze.
But some goop swabbed from a skeleton? You would first need some serious lab work and/or tests to separate the thing into single substances (or test for presence of particular substances kinda like they test for blood on weapons etc), then analyze those slowly, to find out mass, functional groups present, their relative placement within a molecule.. and so on. Then you collate the data, and based on that, MAYBE, you are able to INFER what the compound is (if it's not some complex protein/enzyme that's not well known/documented). There is nothing that will take in some slime, go *beep-boop* and spit out names of 15 enzymes, some metallic compounds and others that were inside. Analysis takes time, and effort and a LOT of knowledge.
Also, more often then not, when Hodgins looks under a microscope at a pollen, hair and whatnot, what is shown is actually an SEM picture (as in, scanning electron microscope), and not photos taken with a light microscope.
Finally, who would ever have a functioning lab on a platform in ther middle of a space people walk around? That's insane. The level of health and safety risks is just staggering. It took me most of the first season to get over that thing.
.. So yeah, there you go. A great episode, very informative, especially in terms of realities of scientific work.
