MythBusters - The Lost Experiments

theLorax writes "From Discovery: "If you like the MythBusters here are some videos they just posted of some of the out takes and things that didn't appear on the show. Cola bits (cleaning things with cola), water torture, otter ping pong, live power lines, cement build up and plywood flight." Here is the interview we did with these guys in December.

Reason

[JonN]

I am just thinking of the reason behind these videos being released. Is it because they enjoy communicating with, and appreciate their fans? Or is it simply a marketing plan created by the Discovery Channel.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching them, I just prefer to keep that squishy feeling in my heart that they really love us, and the interview they did here helped that along, with this pushing it further.

What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[CyricZ]

I have relatives in the US who recently told me about the lack of quality on the Discovery Channel. I recall watching very good shows on it around a decade or so ago. True to their name, they focused on content that most traditional channels wouldn't bother to touch.

However, what I've been hearing now is that the Discovery Channel is moving away from their specialty programming, more towards content that will appeal to a wider range of people. This change does being a decrease in quality, according to my cousins.

I think I know what they mean. Shows like American Chopper and American HotRod, which I have watched over here in the UK, are more like soap operas than educational, enlightening shows. The two or three minutes of engineering in each episode is overshadowed by 57 minutes of workplace drama and commercials.

While a show like Mythbusters isn't as bad, it still lacks the quality that previous shows on the Discovery Channel had. None of the hosts have much engineering or scientific experience, and it shows. Even watching just one episode, one will hear numerous factually incorrect statements (especially when it comes to chemistry or physics). Perhaps it is entertaining, but educational it is not.

Re:Video summaries.

[Z0mb1eman]

I actually watched the water torture one, by chance. It refers to the so-called chinese water drop - a person is immobilized, and drops of water drop on the same spot on their forehead, at a rate of one drop every 2 seconds or so.

They tested it on Kari... since there's no physical torture (other than being restrained), and they were obviously going to let her go when she had enough, it's not much of an issue showing it on TV.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[bani]

the assumption people usually make when they bring up the subject is that discovery channel programs are produced by the discovery channel. they are genuinely suprised to find out that e.g. mythbusters isn't produced by them.

discovery channel can only show whats being produced. if shit is being produced then shit is all they have to air. people seem to think they know exactly what is available for discovery channel to purchase for broadcast. keep in mind that junkyard wars, the program discovery channel fanatics always bring up as an example, (aka scrapheap challenge) was a purely accidental find.

if you know specific programs discovery channel should be airing, tell them.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[lpangelrob]

The "important" stuff, the stuff you're talking about... that went to PBS or the National Geographic Channel a long time ago.

As the latter has been confined to channel 273 (on Comcast) whereas the Discovery Channel is still in the 70's, that should say something about how many people watch programming on both channels.

An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

[CyricZ]

I have heard it suggested that each segment of their show should be preceeded by a disclaimer explaining that what they're doing is not science, but is purely entertainment.

Many people mistakenly think that the MythBusters present the proper way of performing scientific experiment, and that they present verified scientific information. Indeed, watching even a single episode shows that they have very little scientific or engineering background.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[samkass]

Are these shows educational? No.

If you're arguing that Mythbusters isn't educational, you haven't watched enough episodes. Yes, they make mistakes. So do over half of all peer-reviewed scientists' papers, last I read. But it's still a very educational show, and more importantly, one that gets the watcher thinking instead of passively being entertained.

Even if the show contains a greater proportion of entertainment to education than some might like, I think it educates more than some of the old dry shows, because more people watch them. Just to use some silly math, if a show is 90% educational and is watched by 100K people, let's say it has provided 90K education-people worth of education to the world. If a show is 60% educational and watched by 1M people, it's provided 600K education-people worth of education! How's that for a Mythbusters-style estimate?

Re:Reason

[MikeWasHere05]

It can't be both?

Mythbusters is Good

[transami]

Cyric, you are terribly off base! These guys are professionals who have a huge amount of hands on experience in material science. And these guys are doing a great job of introducing the basics of expiremental method to a wide audience. Is it perfect? Of course not. But you are comparing apples and oranges. While I would certainly appreciate some in depth programs on paricular aspects of science, just becuase Mythbusters is not this, does not make it worthless. I usually watch TV to relax. If I wanted a textbook education in physics I'd take a college course, not watch Mythbusters. While the information gained from the show may often be trivial, there are nontheless a great many useful tidbits to be gained from watching. Anf these guys are funny too!

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[freidog]

Same reason all those interior decorating channels are on "The Learning Channel" and Poker and trashy reality shows are on "Bravo" (more of a high brow / art themed network a while ago): these are buisnesses.

With the proliferation of cable / sat TV networks it is increasingly difficult to draw in the ratings needed to pay the bills. 10 years ago Discovery channel didn't have much competition in its niche market. Now on digial cable or satellite service you might have 4 or 5 networks that devote at least part of their programming to somethign appealing to Discovery's core audiance. So The Discovery Channel has to go off and bring in more viewers, and that means shows with broader appeal: ie Mythbusters. It's still science, and still informative (somewhat), but it's mostly about people blowing things up and hurting themselves.

Science

[Freaky Spook]

Science in its most basic form is a system of acquiring knowledge, based on experimentation to find truth.

The mythbusters discuss the theory of the myth & then generate a hypothesis weather it is plausible or not, then conduct an experiment to find out weather their hypothesis is correct.

What is not science about that???

It may be basic science, but its still science.

From what I have seen it is getting a lot of people interested in science so that has to be good doesn't it.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Moofie]

What a narrow-minded view.

These folks never pretended to be Great Scientists. They can and do, however, come up with clever ways to perform experiments that would otherwise be expensive or dangerous.

They sometimes do the dangerous stuff anyway.

I think it's a superb show. I like the way they often go back and revisit things that people say they got wrong. You know, kinda like scientists are supposed to.

I have an extensive science and engineering background, and I think they do a terrific job. Do they get everything right? No. Who cares?

Re:An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

[msloan]

I think you do not understand the concept of science. The shows follow the base scientific method you learn in elementary school. As to the engineering comment, I take it you haven't watched the rainwater-pipe runoff episode, or the one where they disprove the myth of slingshotting immigrants over the border.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[evilviper]

The clip in the video showed a snafu that occured with the first truck when they accidentally filled it up with cement rather than just having enough for a thin coat. It lead up to a spectacular event where they blew up the enture truck with 850 pounds of TNT.

The cement truck was the most disappointing one in a long time. Everyone who has ever even seen explosives in action knows that you drill a hole in the material (the cemet block in this case) and drop the TNT down the hole before detonating it. They just hung a stick of dynamite above the cemet, and gave up when it didn't do anything.

Before Mythbusters, I've never wanted to reach through my TV and smack people for being so stupid. With Mythbusters, it's a regular occurance. It almost seems like they go out of their way to make their tests complete nonsense.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a suggestion: change the channel. Or turn off the TV.

This reminds me of the folks I hear complaining about all the ads before the trailers (i.e. more ads) before the movies (with their product placements, i.e. more ads). If you find it intolerable, don't go. Only when the numbers drop off will the industry stop insulting us with that crap. Remember, when you go to a movie theater, you think you've simply bought the right to see a movie; true, but the more important transaction is that an advertiser has bought the right to assault your senses. *You* are the product. (This is perhaps more true with TV.)

Lordy, I needed to get that off my chest. (Geeks read Adbusters, too.)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, perhaps if you tried to fill it with air, it would escape out the same holes that caused it to sink....last I checked, ping pong balls were slightly larger than an average molecule of N2 or 02.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[idonthack]

They have a disclaimer in which they explicitly state that they're "professionals", and then encourage that people not try the "experiments" at home, if I'm not mistaken. So it really doesn't encourage others to try such activities themselves.

Would you want someone to sue you because they built a cannon out of a tree, then blew it up and killed/injured themselves? It's there to prevent things like that. Also, IIRC, they have had a few shows with a safe experiment where they said they would like people to try it at home themselves.

...educational their program is not.

I know I've learned a few things on that show, mostly just bits of trivia such as how emergency elevator brakes are triggered (antique ones at least) but a less knowledgable person such as an elementary school student would learn things like what a Faraday cage is, how lightning works, and why putting a vaccum cleaner motor on your face is a bad idea.

But there is no doubt that sometimes they get things wrong. Once I watched them "disprove" a myth that I know for a fact to be true, which was rather dissapointing.

Re:An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

[raoul666]

It's not great science, but a lot of it isn't half bad. Besides which, they're usually testing fairly simple myths to see if they're plausible or not. Some stuff, like "could you raise a boat with ping-pong balls" they do. Scientific or not, that's a good, solid result. It's possible. It's really the busted myths that may or may not be accurate. To give them credit, I usually hear them say things like "for this to work you'd need this, this, this, and this to happen, and that's incredibly unlikely" or "we couldn't build a jetpack, so an average joe probably couldn't either." As for scientific or engineering background, they may not be certified or educated, but they certainly do alright. Their solutions are usually simple, and they typically work. Look at the rig they used to get those ping-pong balls down to the boat. Design me something cheaper, faster, and easier, if you can.

Also, a lot of the time they call in experts. I think that's a pretty good lesson to be teaching people, about both science and life.

Re:a step removed

[Anonymous Coward]

when are they going to deal with the myth that Java "is just as efficient as C++ these days"

The same day they deal with the myth that C++ is as productive as Java.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[spoco2]

My god what a absolute killjoy you are! I mean, come on, this is one of the shows I really look forward to watching these days, and there are almost none of that ilk for me... and I think it's a fascinating show which shows things being done which are the sorts of things that many of us wish we could do if we happened to have lots of money and ample free time. (or be paid to do it).

I find out all sorts of interesting factoids from it, and I am not having my intelligence insulted while I watch it either (like the horrendous English version 'Braniac'... What a completely disgusting show that is. "Let's disguise some random violence and tits as science").

Just because it's not some intensely specialised, narrow focus, boring as hell to most, monotone narrated documentary, does not make it uneducational. Do you equate 'popular' with uneducational do you?

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[prockcore]

I'll be left with the History Channel. If they follow suit, I will abandon my T.V. forever.

I don't think you need to worry. The History Channel will be showing "The Last Days of Hilter" from now until the end of time.

Screw Mr. Wizard

[tedrlord]

People keep complaining about how unscientific Mythbusters is, and I often see problems with their experiments, but personally I just like the creative ways they use their special effects skills to build test cases. It's just fun to watch, and it makes me wonder about the actual myths.

Mr. Wizard always bugged me, because it was targeted toward children as actual scientific experiments, but it was really obvious even when I was young that they just took existing facts then had these kids do rigged and generally flawed experiments to demonstrate them.

There was one that I still remember from when I was young where he had a kid test whether vision or hearing was more sensitive. They had the kid match a tone using a generator that had 1000 different tones, and was off by one. Then they had her match a shade of blue out of a range of a hundred cards. Again, she was off by one. Since 1/1000 is more exact than 1/100, obviously hearing was more sensitive.

I got really upset about that one and went huffing off to tell my mother how they didn't use an equivalent sample set or use the same gradation of sound/light frequency between the two experiments (not in so many words, of course). The way Mr Wizard told the kid that the results demonstrated her hearing was more sensitive than her vision really irked me and turned me off the show completely.

At least with the Mythbusters there's that general sense of "Huh, well this seemed to work," and they're open to retesting a theory if people call them on it. Personally I think incorrect conclusions and an open, experimental mindset are better science than established facts and weighted demonstrations. For kids these days, it's easy to look up information, but the inquisitiveness and cleverness in experimentation they demonstrate is a lot more compelling to young minds.

Re:An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

[FreelanceWizard]

If your definition of "science" is "performing an experiment with the level of replication, control, and measurement expected in the relevant field," then no, they're not doing science. However, any working scientist will tell you that the sorts of exploratory research and demonstrations that the Mythbusters do are actually done -- toy experiments to detected the presence of an effect with a particular manipulation ("pilot studies") are common in experimental psychology, because the costs of doing a full experiment and finding no effect are rather substantial. Take the ping-pong salvage myth, for instance. You certainly couldn't publish a paper on that; there's not enough control for aspects such as water temperature, salinity, and other factors that are relevant, and so you can't generalize the result. However, the fact that they were able to raise the ship suggests strongly that the effect exists, and if you really wanted to explore it further, you could. (Technically, they could probably have just done some math to show it, but that's not nearly as cool.) I would argue that they are doing science -- just not on the level of peer-reviewed outlets, but that's fine given their objectives.

The other important thing the Mythbusters do is to get people thinking scientifically. If you watch an episode and think of ways to blow holes in their design, or ways it could have been done more generally, congratulations -- you're thinking like a scientist. You don't need years of meticulous training in an ivory tower to learn how to do science, and saying otherwise is contributing to the already substantial image problem researchers have.

Re:a step removed

[DrugCheese]

somehow I doubt we'll ever see them stick a lit firework up their own ass or eat a snowcone flavored with their own piss

their IQ is at least a double digit number, which puts them many a step from jackass

Re:Mythbusters is Good

[GigsVT]

I think people like the grandparent post feel challenged by something like Mythbusters.

I'm going to make some big assumptions about the grandparent poster, but I bet they are someone mired in acedemia. I can see how it would burn up someone like that to see people actually can get meaningful results without all the bullshit that acedemic research entails, and without the cushy welfare money that educational researchers get.

I think mythbusters is better than higher education research in some ways too, because they show you their methodologies in clear terms and not jargon designed to make it inaccessible to most people outside a certain field.

While they are guilty of lots of non-scientific practice, it's easy to see that right away. If some bogus acedemic study comes out, we get stupid headlines based on the study and then a month later someone else writes a journal article challenging the results and methodology. With mythbusters it's all laid out in the open, you get to see how scientific or unscientific they were right from the start.

Re:a step removed

[japhmi]

They only take on myths that are remotely possible.

Or allow them to blow something up.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Damvan]

I think they concentrate on 20th Century wars, because those are the wars that they have film footage. You can only show those 12 Civil War reenactors so many times (blurred out usually) during that documentary on Shiloh.