One advantage that a scam artist has over his victims is preparation time.  He can skillfully prepare his scam over months and years, but when he springs it on the mainstream media, they take his pre-packaged story and go to press with it immediately, lest all of the audience read the story at other outlets.  If you take two or three days to investigate, the news is now old.  Fortunately for both the purveyor and conveyors of the story, the audience is not so concerned with details and by the time the scam is revealed, the audience is entertained by the newest sensation.

The problems with Jacobovici’s “Nails of the Cross” are in the details.  Gordon Franz has done some rather elementary detective work that suggests that Jacobovici is purposefully misleading his audience in order to sell his show. 

Jacobovici’s theory is that these two nails from Jesus’ crucifixion were buried with Caiaphas because he converted to faith in Jesus.  The problem, as Franz notes, is that these two nails were not buried with Caiaphas.  The burial cave in question held dozens of people and six ossuaries (bone boxes). 

Two of the ossuaries have inscriptions related to Caiaphas (#3 and #6), but no nails were found in either of these ossuaries.  One nail was found inside Ossuary 1, and the other was found in a burial niche.  Jacobivici’s presentation assumes that Caiaphas’s remains were interred in Ossuary 3, but this ossuary contained only the bones of women and children.  Ossuary 6 had the bones of a 60-year-old man, possibly the famous high priest, but this beautiful and intact stone box did not contain any nails.

Second, Franz observes that there are very obvious reasons for nails being found in a burial tomb. 

Sometimes lids were attached to ossuaries by means of a nail.  In this tomb, names were scratched into the sides of several ossuaries, and this was done using nails.  As Franz writes:

It is highly probable that the nail found in Kokhim IV was used for scratching the names of Caiaphas on Ossuary 6, but it is important to note that it was not found inside the ossuary of Caiaphas and thus not a talisman with divine power to protect Caiaphas in the afterlife as Jacobovici would like to claim.

Third, Franz questions whether a nail only three inches long could have sufficiently held an adult man to a cross.  The only nail known to have been used in a crucifixion was longer than four inches.
Jacobovici has said he spent three years making this video, yet if he had spent three hours in a library looking at a handful of articles he would have known that the evidence does not support his theory. 

But since his reporting depends on these very same articles, it is impossible for him to claim that he is ignorant of this data.  The success of his show is dependent upon the ignorance of his viewers, something that his highly selective presentation is intended to maintain. 

Gabriel Barkay is probably the world’s leading scholar on tombs in Jerusalem.  He is quoted in a story by the Agence France-Presse.

Gabi Barkai, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University who has 40 years of experience excavating tombs in Jerusalem, confirmed the nails dated back to the first century, but said it was impossible get a more accurate date.
“Nails are a rare things in tombs from Second Temple period Jerusalem,” he told reporters, noting that there was no bone residue attached to them.
There were several theories as to why they might have been put inside a grave, one of which was that crucifixion nails were believed to be powerful amulets for the afterlife.
But there was “no proof whatsoever that these nails came from the cave of Caiaphas,” he said.
Asked if he believed they were used in the crucifixion, Barkai was cautious.
“It’s a possibility,” he said.

I take the last quote in the sense of, “It’s not absolutely impossible that these nails were used in a crucifixion.”  It should also be noted that Barkay was likely a paid consultant for his appearance in the movie, and he would have been reluctant to completely dismiss the movie’s basic premise at a news conference sponsored by the film producer.

Time magazine has this:

Also unclear: Why would a priest be buried with a nail? Jacobovici points to scholarship indicating crucifixion nails were regarded by contemporary Jews as holding special healing powers. The bit of paganism was apparently tolerated, even in priestly circles: a woman’s skull found in the same tomb contained a Roman coin, presumably included to pay the boatman steering souls across the River Styx.
Gaby Barkay, a professor at Bar Ilan University and probably the most prominent archeologist in Israel, offers another explanation. Jews at the time of Christ “were impurity freaks,” Barkay says. Anything in the vicinity of a corpse was thought to be contaminated by death, even a nail stuck in a nearby wall. “Therefore it would probably be removed and put into the grave,” he says.
The professor quibbles with other assumptions as well, but notes that “nails in general are a rare thing in tombs of the Second Temple Period,” and his presence at a crowded news conference has added weight to Jacobovici’s effort.

Barkay may be one of the most credible archaeologists in Israel, but he’s certainly not the most prominent.  While it is true that crucifixion nails were considered sacred amulets in the ancient world, that is usually the explanation given for why nails are not found in tombs.

The Christian Post adds:

According to the documentary’s guest archaeologist, Gaby Barkay, iron nails were rarely found in tombs and were normally used to carve names in the stone ossuaries.
“There’s no proof that the nails are connected to any bones or proof from textual data that Caiaphas had the nails for the crucifixion with him after the crucifixion took place and after Jesus was taken down from the cross,” Barkay said. “On the other hand, those are possible things.”

Everything is possible.  The question is, what is likely given the evidence?  Should profit motives influence our evaluation of a claim?