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Busting Mythbusters

Is Mythbusters science?

  • Yes

    Votes: 125 51.4%

  • No

    Votes: 51 21.0%

  • Hello Hot Redhead Don't Care!

    Votes: 67 27.6%
  • Total voters
    243
Steve001 said:
For all the grippers in this thread would you prefer more TAPS ?
Sometimes I think some of you just like to b __ch just for the sake of it.
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Huh? Who is gripping? What happens if we get more TAPS? What's a TAPS anyway?

Stop 8__ching at 9rippers all the time, why don't u, @___1e?
 
KingMerv00 said:
Turn in your nerd card.
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I know,...I am often late when it comes to television, ever since I did not watch it from about 1993 to 2002, as I was a teenager and spent all my time hobnobbing. I did not watch cable television from 1993 to 2006,.... I still feel like I am playing catch up in many ways. I don't know what it is that bores me so much about the actual show, the premise seems like something I'd be all over.
I think it's the arbitrary factor I always feel they are kind of ignoring the handful of times I've watched.
 
John Jones said:
Get that out of your mind! She's a redhead, for doG's sake.
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Hey! As a red-bearded 1/8th Irishman, I take offense to that! :p Where's that darn shillelagh........

Halfcentaur said:
I think it's the arbitrary factor I always feel they are kind of ignoring the handful of times I've watched.
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To be fair, often the myth is so much more absurd that even a bad attempt at rigor is better than the myth deserves. If you want to test a well-thought-out, logical hypothesis you construct a well-thought-out, logical experiment. If you want to test whether a sheet of plywood would save a guy from falling, you throw a dummy off the roof and laugh when it falls apart (then run away before the cops show up).

Though I have to admit, the breathalizer test has always been suspect as far as I'm concerned. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but there's that little voice in the back of my head asking "Would the cops allow them to air the results if they worked?"

As far as TV goes, I'm with you. I stopped watching for a year, and never really got back into it.

You might need 1200 trucks to know if it's likely under the myth's circumstances, but that's usually not the question posed.
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To be fair, they'd already tested what the myth said in that episode. They simply wanted to make a truck go "boom" at that point. And let's be honest, part of the draw for the show is that they get to do what every little boy and half the little girls who've ever gotten ahold of a plastic truck and a bottle rocket have wanted to do. It's pandering, but that's their hook. "We blow [bleep] up", as the barreted one put it.

Here's a question: Was Cosmos science?
 
What is missing from Mythbusters that would make it into first class science.
1. Independent review of all experiments (peer review).
2. Independent replication of experiments.

You could say the viewers review the results of the experiments. Ok the Mythbusters got a wooden cannon to fire. Was that a fluke? Or maybe it was fraud? But if someone else did it and got the same result then we can say that it is possible to build a wooden cannon. Until then the answer is uncertain.
 
ehcks said:
It's not the hard theoretical science people seem to stereotypically assume "real" scientists do. But it's still real. They do the math to see if their myths are even reasonable. They do quite a few experiments to see if the myth could actually happen. Then if it fails, they show what it would require for the myth to work as stated.

The main point of the show is to get people interested in testing their beliefs. They do that well.

http://xkcd.com/397/
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I agree. It is scientific in so far as they are guided by scientific principles in their work. However, due to the limitations of the format I suppose, they rarely test the full range of alternate possibilities. But as an entertaining show based on scientific principles that does get people to think about their own beliefs, then they do well (much better that the woo spouted by Penn & Teller for instance - which is about as far from science as one could get).
 
JCM said:
Comments on "Mythbusters" scientific setup. What do you all think? Two special effects guys and a girl that all do math. What science degrees do they have? Is the show presented as science to the general/ do they accept it as such? I always thought of it as entertainment but a lot of people i know take it as science and think the hosts are all PhD'd.
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Just ignore me, no one likes me pointing this out, but science doesn't depend on the scientist having a PHD, just practicing good science. IMO, that is a form of Ad Hom. (If you dispute their science, dispute their science- attack the argument not the arguer).

Now, as far as this show, they are having to squish it all into 30 minutes, and make it entertaining for Joe Q. Public. Science is kinda boring for the general public, hence, the entertainment value being more important than the science.
 
Rramjet said:
I agree. It is scientific in so far as they are guided by scientific principles in their work. However, due to the limitations of the format I suppose, they rarely test the full range of alternate possibilities. But as an entertaining show based on scientific principles that does get people to think about their own beliefs, then they do well (much better that the woo spouted by Penn & Teller for instance - which is about as far from science as one could get).
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Interestingly, Penn & Teller have done an episode on alien abduction. Myth Busters hasn't, so far as I can tell, covered anything UFO-related. I wonder if your opinion will change if Myth Busters bust some UFO stories?
 
thaiboxerken said:
If I could fall in love with a person I've only seen on TV, it would be Kari.
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Sorry, don't see this. She is cute, but she irritates the snot out of me. She is OK on the show, but every interview I have seen her in just made me hate her.
 
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rjh01 said:
What is missing from Mythbusters that would make it into first class science.
1. Independent review of all experiments (peer review).
2. Independent replication of experiments.

You could say the viewers review the results of the experiments. Ok the Mythbusters got a wooden cannon to fire. Was that a fluke? Or maybe it was fraud? But if someone else did it and got the same result then we can say that it is possible to build a wooden cannon. Until then the answer is uncertain.
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When viewers have raised criticisms or experimental method they have retested, sounds like peer review to me.

They show (so far as time allows) how the experiment was done, anyone with the inclination and resources can replicate. Pretty much the same as any other experiment.

And a single 'fluke' result still proves that something is possible, any number of subsiquent fails may increase knowledge of the probabability of something occurring but won't make it impossible. You make a wooden cannon once and you've proved you can make a wooden canon, whether it is would be wise to rely on one is a completely different question.
 
I love the show, but if they confuse force with pressure one more time, my head's gonna asplode...

ferd
 
John Jones said:
Huh? Who is gripping? What happens if we get more TAPS? What's a TAPS anyway?

Stop 8__ching at 9rippers all the time, why don't u, @___1e?
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Don't hail from the States ?
TAPS is a reality ghost hunting show that uses scientific tools and crack analytical skills to find ghosts. Or at least tries too.
 
I enjoy Mythbusters; it's one of the few shows I watch regularly. (When it's on...They take long hiatus periods)
I don't expect "science" in the strict meaning of the term. For the vast majority of viewers, this would be deadly dull... A requisite number of splashy explosions has high appeal.
I've been posting on the Mythbusters forum almost since it started; 2006 or so. The average level of questions we get on the board are really bad.... As well, you get cranks (much like here) who are convinced that the Mythbusters made some terrible mistake and that if only they'd listen to the pet theory....
It's amusing.
 
At one end of the scale you have Ghost Hunters and at the other is a 24/7 webcam set up in the control room at the Hadron Collider. Both make for dreadful science tv because one isn't entertaining and the other isn't science. Mythbusters falls nicely in the middle.

One of the things I appreciate most about the show is that if people write in saying "You overlooked a variable" or "You totally screwed the pooch on that one", they have no problem saying "You're right; let's revisit it."
 
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