On CSI, Law & Order, and Mythbusters

[Mental]

Soooo true, even though I love MythBusters. "What do you mean, one data point isn't enough?"

[SineSwiper]

Such a undeserved burn on Mythbusters. They know that they aren't trying to get past a peer review study, and typically they DO have a control group.

I like the first two panels. I fucking hate CSI because of how grossly unrealistic it is. At least House tries to be somewhat realistic, even if the characters are doing everything.

[Tessian]

2nd panel is Bones, not L&O

[Mental]

My bad. I feel the indictment of most TV and movie police/detective "work" is valid across the board, and richly deserved.

I hate that people think real cops are anything like TV cops, because they are not. The police work is all shortened and all the boring stuff is cut out, and all the TV and movie cops have some kind of code of honor even if they're supposed to be "corrupt", which is also nothing like real cops.

And, I love MythBusters too. I'm sure that Adam and Jamie know the difference between what they do to entertain people and a real scientific rigid-controls study. I just love "What do you mean one data point is not enough?"

[SineSwiper]

They try to be a scientific as the timeframes and budget will allow. If multiple data points can be achieved 5 minutes each point, then they'll go ahead and do several points. If it means spending the entire day resetting and buying another couple of cars, they won't.

Be lucky that they listen to their fans and sometimes do experiments over. I really wish that Food Detectives did more of that, and wasn't so scripted. Also, Ted Allen seems to be a major germaphobe. Their whole experiment about double dipping was flawed and Mythbusters seem to counter their results with "what the hell do you have a immune system for anyway?"

Food Detectives is still a fun and informative show, though.

[Mental]

In response to you, Sine...

I'm sure that Adam and Jamie know the difference between what they do to entertain people and a real scientific rigid-controls study. I just love "What do you mean one data point is not enough?"

Four or five data points is also not enough for a "real" study. Anything you can fit into a single episode of Mythbusters is not enough for a "real" study. Adam and Jamie know this, both being of highly advanced education. What they do is entertainment, and has some minor scientific relevance but is not going to change the face of human knowledge.

[SineSwiper]

Four or five data points is also not enough for a "real" study. Anything you can fit into a single episode of Mythbusters is not enough for a "real" study. Adam and Jamie know this, both being of highly advanced education. What they do is entertainment, and has some minor scientific relevance but is not going to change the face of human knowledge.

I beg to differ. What they do DOES changes the face of human knowledge. They bust or prove myths, which are absolutely not based on science, using techniques that, while doesn't completely follow rigid scientific standards, is based around science.

The result is many a conversation of "Actually, that was disproven on Mythbusters". Some science is better than no science.

[Mental]

I think it depends on the myth being busted. For instance, I thought the one where they stuffed the different kinds of improvised shrapnel into a cannon to test effectiveness gave results that were believable and would be easily reproducible - as in, if you did that particular test twenty times over, you'd get similar results. Watching that load of knifeshot eviscerate the dummy was also SWEET.

But, like, the Jimmy Hoffa "mythbust" where they killed the pig and buried it and the stench rotted through to the surface, I'm not so sure that was a good analogy. If you cover a body in salt and sawdust and other kinds of pretty basic preservatives that one presumes well-prepared assassins could have easily had on hand, it's not going to rot egregiously like that. Besides which, anything corporeal on Hoffa's corpse aside from the bones would have rotted away decades ago by now.

(For what it's worth, no, I don't think Hoffa's body is buried at the 50-yard line in Giants Stadium or in any other part of the stadium, and I seem to remember always thinking that sounded very much like the urban legend it undoubtedly is. I did find the sonar-testing or whatever it was they did to be credible, I just didn't quite buy the rotting pig as a good analogy for what hitmen might do to hide a human body.)

As a final note, in a similar vein to how sweet the cannon knifeshot thing was on Mythbusters, I urge everyone to go look up the Brainiac clip where they melt a hole right through the bottom of an old Citroen car engine with thermite just to see if they can.

Sample dialogue: "We're going to try to destroy this car engine with thermite. Because it's old, because it's white, but, most importantly, because it's French."

[SineSwiper]

I like how when they busted the whole cell phones cause gas sparks thing, all of the gas stations started removing those stupid labels warning against it.