Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first penned the exploits of Sherlock Holmes in 1887, the justice profession has despaired that revealing the art of the detective could only help criminals evade capture.

Similarly, when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation launched in 2000, detailing the forensic techniques of the Las Vegas Police Department, social commentators warned it gave miscreants the means of, literally, getting away with murder.

Even Lord Leveson warned of the ‘CSI Effect’ claiming it created unrealistic expectations of forensic services which helped criminals escape a guilty verdict if crime scene evidence was inconclusive.

But now a research project has proved that the phenomenon does not exist.

A team of psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, trawled police databases, interviewed criminals and carried out crime-scene experiments and concluded the 'CSI Effect' is simply a myth.

"We can now dispel certain of the myths that have been coursing through the media and other publications for the past 20 years because we are able to state with relative certainty that people who watch CSI are no better at covering their tracks than other people,” said Dr. Andreas Baranowski.