It’s been announced that Mythbusters’ fourteenth season will be its last. To be honest, I’ve only see a few segments of the show online. I don’t watch TV. I have too much to do, and perhaps in this case, that’s my mistake. Perhaps I should have been watching the show religiously with my kids beside me. But even I have felt the impact of Mythbusters. And I’m clearly not alone. The New York Times is giving out some high plaudits for the show:
Too often, science is presented as a body of established facts to be handed down to obedient students. But “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. (Penny: false. Poppy seeds: true.) Every episode is an object lesson in the scientific method. Scientists had often been depicted in entertainment, but rarely had audiences seen people actually doing science.
Obviously, experiments staged for television can’t have the rigor of peer-reviewed lab work. But “MythBusters” captures the underlying mind-set of science. At a time when “skepticism” too often means rejecting any ideas one finds politically unpalatable, “MythBusters” provides a compelling example of real scientific skepticism, the notion that nothing can be held true until it is confirmed by experimentation.
It’s also good television. “MythBusters” is relentlessly entertaining partly because it channels the underlying suspense of science itself: The hosts don’t know how an experiment is going to turn out any more than the audience does.
I think we in America need more good STEM role-models and less politicization of science. We need more frank, open discussion about what research and studies really mean and don’t mean. We need more honesty in science, and especially in science journalism. If Mythbusters started us toward that end, then its passing from the cable-waves is indeed a loss.