this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Mythbustets do not meet the standards of professional science. The point is that not all science needs to be done at standard set by professionals.
I think the problem stems from the fact that "professional" isn't properly defined anywhere. Is science valid if it wasn't performed in a funded lab by PhD students? At what point does it become exemplary of junk science rather than hard science? Basic controls being absent means, IMO, that it doesn't fit any proper definition of science. Motivating kids and adults to think more "scientifically" is all well and good, but promoting MB as if it represents honest-to-goodness science is bad press. Getting people excited about science, and then demonstrating a bad way to do science is counter productive.
nobody calls themselves a scientist because they watched Mythbusters, but they might get interested in it through watching it. That's the point.
I would argue that that point is weak and of dubious merit.
I would argue you're just picky.
Okay. I don't see how that refutes any of my prior statements. Promoting junk science and then defending junk science as the only way to get people interested in STEM is a flimsy debate tactic.
If you like the show you like the show. I'm not here to poo poo people's taste in programming. But promoting it as culturally important and "it gets kids into STEM!" is disingenuous.
But it is culturally important due to how many people watched it and reference it and it did get kids into STEM, just because it is flawed in other ways do not discount those two facts.
I would argue you're not worth arguing with.
Just watching you reply to every comment in this thread is cringe.
While I understand the spirit of your argument, I think you’re being a bit too pedantic in a forum where the audience isn’t primarily academic or hard science oriented.
Think of shows like Mythbusters and Bill Nye as modern day equivalents to the big “scientific demonstrations” you’d see people like Edison doing for audiences at the turn-of-the-century. They are in no way there to demonstrate an authentic experience of the scientific method because the minutiae of actual scientific research would never make good television.
That being said, Mythbusters does explain the process of how they design their experiments pretty well. A viewer who works in experimental sciences can easily spot any flaws in their methodology, and a non-scientifically inclined person would never spot them anyways.
Bill Nye taught viewers about the scientific method and regularly referenced classic experiments. Bill Nye actually taught kids the importance of rigor in doing science, and he regularly criticized junk and pseudo science in the program. But, I guess pedantry as it relates to science is a no-no now.
Oo! Oo!
Now do Beakman’s World!