What We Owe the MythBusters | Hacker News Reader

What We Owe the MythBusters

nytimes.com

146 pointsmmastrac46 comments

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/ [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQAYfGxsPE

The season that recently ended reformatted the show somewhat. They removed the B team this allowing Jamie and Adam much more time to show the process. I thought it was a large improvement, even though I had liked the co-hosts.

I wanted to dislike the change, but I agree, the extra time it allowed for them to dig into how they do what they do was a lot of fun.

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... [2] http://www.tested.com/forums/general-discussion/43226-welcom...

here here. got big love for Will and Norm and have been a fan of tested for a long time. In recent times they've been responsible for some of the most comprehensive VR news and coverage, and now Will is going on to do his own thing in the VR space whilst Norm continues on at the head at Tested.

I think/hope that their association with the mythbusters has promoted Tested to many who haven't heard of it before - and it's worth HN users knowing that they actually had a podcast with Adam called Still Untitled http://www.tested.com/still-untitled-the-adam-savage-project... as well as their regular thursday podcast which is usually great fun.

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'.

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.

I've been hoping for a Junkyard Wars reboot starring a rotating cast of Mythbusters cast/alumnae (including the B Team members). I love the crazy builds and seeing their thought process in how/why they build what they do. A show like Junkyard Wars would be a perfect venue for this.

Kari from the build team said on Twitter that this was really close to happening but ultimately it didn't get picked up. Discovery is going to need to fill the hole in their lineup somehow, so maybe it'll come around again. I'd love to see that revived.

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.

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".

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.

People used to think that thinking was all that was needed. So they sat and pontificated, and I'm sure they were right about some things.

But then you get a bunch of people who said things like "hey, what if I actually throw two different cannonballs off a tower? Does the heavier one get to the bottom first?"

(That particular one can actually be figured out by a thought experiment, so maybe not so great an example.)

People did amazing things like measure the value of G in their basements. Flying kites to see WTF electricity is. Making rainbows with prisms. And it just keeps going...

Some pretty bad things were done to a lot of those that 'got off their asses'. It is much more acceptable to buck authority now, or at least a lot less dangerous.

MythBusters episodes with the repetitive stuff edited out: https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths

Those are awesome.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's why science has peer-review community and replicable experiments part of it. Neither would make a good TV obviously, and I doubt that many of their conclusions would be falsified with independent research.

I used to have the same problem, but really they're following the spirit of the scientific process, just not the rigour. "Think of something and try it out" is the fundamental essence; "try it out rigourously" is the follow-on.

My favourite lack of rigour is their lack of statistical knowledge. They had a toast dropper, and were testing the randomness before the mythbusting run. The test toast dropped 7/10 drops on one side. "This is not random enough!", cried Savage, "If it was truly random, it would have been 5 on each side!". Betrays a startling lack of statistical knowledge :) But yes, they have done wonders for promoting the spirit of inquiry.

(I enjoyed[1] mythbusters, and thought it was good.)

But the way they had that big metal plate that they'd drop in slomo with a clang saying "BUSTED!" gave the impression that this was now FACT and TRUTH.

For a fun tv show that's fine, but for science education (which is what a lot of people thought MB was) it's sub-optimal.

[1] although I prefered the remixed versions where each item was run in a single block, rather than the broadcast version which flicked from item to item and back again, with many catchups and coming nexts.

Apparently the ridiculous amount of catchups and re-updating is something the presenters don't like either, but their producer listens to the cuts in her car, and basically demands the catchups so she knows what the current cut is about.

Well, depends on the context really (they also have a plausible category)

So if they could find a counterexample to a myth it might get the 'busted' result (example: the Lead Balloon)

Streamlined Mythbusters edits: https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths/

An important detail is that they don't show all the repetitions variations for time constrains. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters

> Testing is often edited due to time constraints of a televised episode. It can often seem as if the teams draw results from fewer repetitions and a smaller data set than they actually have. During the Outtakes Special, they specifically stated that while they are, in fact, very thorough in testing myths and repeat experiments many times in many different configurations, it is simply impossible to display all of it during a program. Beginning in the fifth season, episodes typically contain a prompt for the viewer to visit the show's homepage to view outtake footage of either additional testing, or other facets of the myths being tested. However, Savage himself has acknowledged that they do not purport always to achieve a satisfactorily large enough set of results to overcome definitively all bias.

While, I don't entirely disagree I think this is ultimately less important. It's not like someone is going to go straight from watching Mythbusters to writing journal articles. There's plenty of time to learn how real science is done, if you can get them to care in the first place.

This reminds me of the common experience where people end up more enamored with a subject (and ultimately learn more about it) if the teacher who introduced them to it was more enthusiastic and effective, as opposed to more skilled in the subject at hand.

The problem is: that need for rigourous methods at all times is what drives people away from science. It sucks the fun out of it.

Nothing has to be rigourous at all times. And certainly not on a TV show meant to entertain.

And people are not stupid, they understand that their methods have flaws. In fact, that's one of the reasons the show is as effective as it is: people discuss both the methods and the results, which is an example of peer review.

But even for entertainment there is a breaking point. I stopped watching after their "Episode 56: Killer Whirlpools, Snowplow Flips Car". They tested the snow plow "myth" on a flat[1], dry[2,3] airport runway then claimed it "busted". Since I know its possible and lost a friend who got sucked over by a semi in winter driving. I lost all believability.

1) actual roads have a bigger curve to allow run off

2) dry asphalt has a different coefficient of friction than snow/ice cover roads

3) snow plows put out a heck of a lot of snow

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.

Plus they're limited by a budget (who isn't?), their building skills, and the need to have at least one myth per episode end with a giant BOOM.

He never said they need to be 100% rigorous, he criticized their overconfident / absolutist conclusions.

We all know why they mislabel the conclusions - because they prioritize "good tv" over accuracy. It's perfectly reasonable to be disappointed about that.

> 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.

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)

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

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

> It's entirely possible to both remain entertaining and better communicate scientific values.

Another assumption right here.

I feel this is partly made up for by the way they would revisit certain myths if the fans felt they hadn't been tested properly - showing the importance of verification of results in science. A good example is the Archimedes Death Ray myth, which they tested in 3 different episodes. When they claimed a myth was "busted," that didn't mean the myth would not be tested again!

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"

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].

For folks complaining about their lack of rigor, the obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/397/

One of my favorites :-)

"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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com