BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / The science of deduction is more elusive than I thought.

**Posted by vaticancameos** June 29, 2013 5:05 am

I was a little disappointed that the mock-up of Sherlock's website doesn't actually have his identification guide of perfumes nor his catalog of 243 types of tobacco ash. I mean, I understand that it would be a very time consuming thing for someone to put up on a fake website, but doesn't this kind of information exist elsewhere? "Deduction" seems like such a popular topic, I'm amazed I'm not finding more online info on actual technique rather than vague articles on improving one's memory - which is certainly important, but only one of the facets to Sherlock's successful methods.

Do you guys think that Sherlock's skills come more from years of watching people and the results of their actions to build up a memory bank, or from reading a lot of obscure, technical texts? Sherlock claims he is the only one in the world who can do what he does, but in this day and age you'd think someone out there would be compiling databases of wine stains and types of paper and using the information in a similar way.

**Posted by butterfly grl** June 30, 2013 12:23 am

I admit the websites are a bit disappointing. although a nice side bar to the series.
At least *some of Sherlocks work should be there. He was in a huff about no one reading his website, Johns being better (!), and took down the tobacco ash bit. but some of the science he uses to solve the cases would be nice. Although - they'd have to GET IT RIGHT!
(as a scientist myself, it annoys the bleep out of me when shows do things that are downright impossible for convenience sake, or laziness).

**Posted by davethomas22** October 14, 2013 2:17 am

Have you guys seen the Chase Hughes site? It's by far the closest I've come to seeing the same deductive methods. The Joe Navarro books are good for this as well.

As with the types of tobbacco and whatnot, the national forensics labs publish a lot of that stuff in pdf.

I'm glad someone started ths post. I think I MISTAKENLY posted this into another topic.

**Posted by Bixxel** May 8, 2014 5:00 pm

butterfly grl wrote:
I admit the websites are a bit disappointing. although a nice side bar to the series.
At least *some of Sherlocks work should be there. He was in a huff about no one reading his website, Johns being better (!), and took down the tobacco ash bit. but some of the science he uses to solve the cases would be nice. Although - they'd have to GET IT RIGHT!
(as a scientist myself, it annoys the bleep out of me when shows do things that are downright impossible for convenience sake, or laziness).

He learned those tobacco ash thing by testing and experimenting on things himself.Out of the book knowledge.Like the coagulation time of saliva after death-can you find it anywhere on the internet? No.Because it's never been discovered...