Discussion WMG / CriminalMinds

Just two points about this, since it's not as wild as it seems:

• A lot of those methods would still work. DNA is only useful if the criminal is already in the system, so if police come across a body, unless the killer's DNA is already in the system, until the killer is caught there's no way to pin him to the crime. The show has also rarely recovered the actual murder weapon, and most of the evidence is only procured after profiling- in earlier seasons, at least, the police missed clues because they weren't profiling. Furthermore, given that most of their cases are time sensitive, most of the time consuming evidence building process would be useless, so the profile is needed.

• Even if the show were airing in-universe, it's already established in ours that the psychology and methods used by the BAU are considerably dumbed down than the methods used by the real BAU (since advanced psychology would be past most of the audience). Also, why would the real FBI reveal all its secrets? They would compromise future investigations if they did that. Furthermore, psychology is a widely varied discipline, and the reasons why people kill are just as numerous as potential victims themselves- no pattern would really "repeat itself". Finally, profiling has been around for decades and it's particularly well known- yet, according to the FBI's own research, many serial killers still exist and are active.