
What We Owe the MythBusters - mmastrac
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/opinion/what-we-owe-the-mythbusters.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur
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fdej
I loved MythBusters early on, but I haven't been able to stand watching the
show for several years, save for the occasional episode. You know the drill:
the heavy editing, the grating narrator, the scripted conversations, the
sponsored "myths", the filler explosions.

The fun for me was always in seeing Adam and Jamie doing the actual research
and building in order to test a myth. I liked being able to follow their
thinking process. They would sometimes run into dead ends before even getting
to the building stage, forcing them to rethink their approach. That gives a
better picture of what science and engineering really is like, too. I suppose
there's always been some scripting and editing, and the early seasons were
flawed in other ways, but it definitely seemed to be a lot more genuine early
on.

It's not about an entertainment tradeoff for me, as I simply don't find the
current show format entertaining. But then, I guess I'm just not in the show's
target audience anymore. I can accept that. Some good news, though, is that
Adam and Jamie have started a website [1] where they (primarily Adam) show off
builds and gadgets, without the shackles of the TV show format. For example,
[2] is a video in which Adam Savage explains a tool stand for 14 minutes,
which I honestly found more entertaining and interesting than any MythBusters
episode I can remember seeing recently. I like seeing the nuts and bolts of
their builds and experiments, quite literally.

I hope the final season ends on a high note. All things considered, it's been
a good run, and the team behind MythBusters deserve a huge amount of credit
for what they've done.

[1] [http://www.tested.com/](http://www.tested.com/) [2]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQAYfGxsPE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQAYfGxsPE)

~~~
Deinos
Not to nitpick, but Tested.com was its own entity prior to WhiskeyMedia being
bought out by BermanBraun. [1] The Mythbusters were added to it later, much to
the chagrin of original Tested fans. [2]

While I have appreciated the additional content Adam has provided to Tested,
he is a very small part of the overall product and it is disappointing seeing
the hard work that Norm and Will have put in over the years get overshadowed
by the addition of a couple big names.

All of that being said, like you, I also enjoyed Mythbusters greatly before it
got turned into heavily scripted, formulaic shell of its former self.

[1] [https://www.thewrap.com/bermanbraun-acquires-whiskey-
media-3...](https://www.thewrap.com/bermanbraun-acquires-whiskey-media-36291/)
[2] [http://www.tested.com/forums/general-
discussion/43226-welcom...](http://www.tested.com/forums/general-
discussion/43226-welcome-to-mythbuster-fans/)

~~~
fdej
Thanks for the correction! I just came across tested.com a few months ago, and
probably wouldn't have found it without the 'big names'.

~~~
Deinos
In retrospect, my comment's language was probably a bit harsh. I just always
felt like Norm and Will got trampled a little during the buyout and made the
best of a tough situation (from an "ego" point of view, given what they had
turned the site into).

To be honest, adding the Mythbusters most likely gained them quite a few new
fans and, at a minimum, more page views than they were receiving previously.

------
lordnacho
Testing things out is the very core of science, and these guys drilled it into
a generation of kids.

Armchair scientists like myself like to read about science, but without people
actually having a look, we're back in ancient Greece.

Makes you wonder how much we'd have achieved if people had gotten off their
asses a bit earlier than a few hundred years ago.

~~~
rcthompson
What changed a few hundred years ago? Science has been making progress for
thousands of years. It was just called other things, like "natural
philosophy".

~~~
superuser2
A few hundred years ago people started to become interested in observation,
experiments, and something close to what we'd now call the scientific method.

Previous natural philosophers mostly read what the ancients had written,
thought about it, argued with each other about it, and accepted their
conjectures as scientific fact. Many of these supposed truths were trivial to
invalidate by actually going out in the world and measuring things, but that
didn't come into fashion until relatively recently.

This brief history of science is often taught inside of chemistry classes. My
teacher had a great time telling us about the beliefs that preceded our
current understanding of the atom and how we came to reject them.

------
wolf550e
MythBusters episodes with the repetitive stuff edited out:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths](https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Those are awesome.

------
djent
I remember watching the first episode as it aired with my mom when I was in
elementary school. This was the best I had all my life in terms of science
education for a very long time.

I see other commenters complaining about how they supposedly always tauted
their findings as fact. This is not the case, as evidenced by their
"Revisited" episodes where they address myths that their viewers wrote in
about telling them they made a mistake. Some of their findings completely
flip-floped under different conditions. This also was useful to me as a young
aspiring scientist.

------
jdietrich
The lede is buried:

 _“MythBusters” isn’t about facts, it’s about process: For every myth, the
team has to figure out how to test the claim, then construct an experiment,
carry out the tests and analyze the results._

This is the single most important concept in all of science, and Mythbusters
is the only popular television programme to convey it. Whatever criticism you
might levy against Mythbusters, this core fact is inarguable - Mythbusters has
taught a generation that science is not merely a repository of facts guarded
by an establishment, but an active and ongoing process of discovery and
verification.

Knowing a few facts about the cosmos or the natural world isn't particularly
useful; learning how to ask good questions and find answers for yourself is
invaluable.

Chapeau.

------
marricks
I remember watching in high school with my family and talking about
experiments with my dad. It was a similar experience I had when I watched
MacGyver as an elementary schooler. Culture and specifically TV helps shapes
and nurtures the passions of the next generation.

------
Mithaldu
Es entertaining and inspiring they may be, i will never lose the dislike of
their method of claiming busted/confirmed as if it were a fact and not just
one result of their test setup which may or may not be flawed.

~~~
andrewstuart
I seem to recall they made it clear that they are not doing "science for
pedants". They are doing "science for fun", to make it enjoyable and
interesting and engaging, and they seem to have succeeded as suggested by the
article.

Needing it to be 100% rigorous science is missing the point.

To meet your requirement they would need to submit a multi hundred page peer
reviewed thesis with every assertion of "busted" or "plausible" or whatever.
That would be super boring.

~~~
omginternets
> they are not doing "science for pedants". They are doing "science for fun"

False dichotomy, my friend! I see two underlying arguments, here:

1\. It's disingenuous to claim (or take) credit as a science educator when
you're doing piss-poor science.

2\. They could easily do better without sacrificing entertainment value.

It's entirely possible to _both_ remain entertaining _and_ better communicate
scientific values.

>To meet your requirement they would need to submit a multi hundred page peer
reviewed thesis with every assertion of "busted" or "plausible" or whatever.
That would be super boring.

Holy strawman...

The only thing that most of us asking for is a more nuanced analysis of
results, by which I mean saying something like "we didn't disprove the myth,
so it might actually be possible". Nobody is asking for a 50-page grant
application.

~~~
maxerickson
They have busted, plausible and confirmed as conclusions, you've pretty much
defined plausible.

(Many of the myths the tested were fine to label as busted or confirmed as
they were vulnerable to a single counter example or verified by a single
positive example)

~~~
omginternets
Yes, and the argument being made is that many of the instances of "busted"
are, in fact, not.

~~~
maxerickson
You didn't say that they should take the middle more often, you just said that
they should take the middle.

------
sageikosa
Windows down immediately if your car goes into a pond, lake of river. That's
the most important thing I got from mythbusters. The most philosophically
enlightening statement from the show was "I reject your reality and substitute
my own"

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exabrial
The show went downhill after that stopped showing the "build" part of the myth
and just showing the results. The editors should have recognized that; since
their "experiments" were hardly "scientific", they should have focused on the
how are we going to prove this, to lay a framework for someone to improve upon
their technique.

But all in all, it was a great run. Hats off to a job done well [enough].

------
moron4hire
For folks complaining about their lack of rigor, the obligatory XKCD:
[https://xkcd.com/397/](https://xkcd.com/397/)

~~~
mcphage
One of my favorites :-)

------
kbart
_" When the show began, the idea that average people could build their own
complex gadgets was a fringe notion at best. Today, more than 400,000 students
worldwide gather to compete in FIRST Robotics competitions."_

I would credit that to more powerful, cheaper and easier to work with
electronic components and kits (e.g. Raspberry PI) becoming available rather
than TV show.

