Myth busted that they got wrong
Posted by SheepherderBoring175@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 107 comments
The only myth that they did that really bugs me to this day is the matches in the bathroom. They used wooden matches. That was the biggest mistake. Book matches, light one, let it burn off the wax then flick out, let the smoke dissipate, then throw it in the bowl. Use a second if needed. Even the worst smelling "event" in my bathroom doesn't smell anymore.
IAMJL85FW@reddit
The one that bugs me the most is talking while driving: they had them drive an obstacle course while doing math problems via a cell phone. No control without a cell phone in hand, no control by using the cell phone hands free, no run using normal conversation that doesn’t require problem solving and no control of driving on a normal style course. The whole thing felt like a hidden public service announcement entirely designed to get the desired outcome rather than a fair experiment. Especially since CA was a hands free state and they could have legally tested on a real road using a headset.
If I had unlimited money I would put up a blank check for them to revisit jetpack doing whatever they wanted to get the outcome. I get they followed the plans and by the end were over it and didn’t want to replicate the results but it’s always bothered me that so much potential was left on the table. Especially when they used it for explosive decompression and found it only had 30ish mph wind speed. Nowhere near enough to get liftoff.
Boris-_-Badenov@reddit
candy from a baby: "duh, it takes more effort to take candy from a baby than it does to just pick it up normally.... so it's busted"
not what the fucking saying means at all
Lzinger@reddit
Running in the rain. I see people quote that all the time as they get drenched.
I know they redid it but it seems like no one saw that.
Difficult-Sir-3498@reddit
My pet peeve was the swearing to endure pain test. They timed endurance without swearing, then reran the test allowing swearing. They threw out Adam as a subject when he swore immediately on the first go. They ultimately found a benefit to swearing in how long subjects could endure pain.
However, this didn't account for the possibility that subjects in round 2 were more used to the pain, having experienced it. To properly test, a second pool of subjects should have been allowed to swear on round one instead, then being unable to do so on round two. In a perfectly ideal scenario, two more groups would also be used (swear/swear and no swear/no swear) would also be run to fully isolate the benefit of swearing from the effect of experience/tolerence.
PinNo9795@reddit
Even then pain is so subjective that anyone in any group throws it off one way or another.
That is why I never liked that one just in general. I’m just not sure there is a conclusive test without aggregated results from a massive pool of people for pain and swearing.
ItchyRevenue1969@reddit
How can you tell youre inflicting the same amount of pain?
PinNo9795@reddit
Devices like a tense unit that just use electricity to stimulate muscles and pain. Calibrate that to a specific point and keep it there. Some will be more sensitive than others but that is the point in a large pool of people.
ASCIIM0V@reddit
that's why you do large sample sizes in studies.
Yikidee@reddit
They did this experiment on another show with different people for both groups. Swearing could handle the pain significantly longer. Can't remember the show though sorry.
ZomburtReynolds@reddit
Brainchild on Netflix!
AroundtheRend@reddit
I still think "swearing" isn't what triggers the pain resistance, it's the release of mental barriers that gives it its power. The mind considers "swearing" a passive law that it must check itself against in every social interaction; when the pain starts and you instinctively allow that mental law to be broken it gives a rush that helps mitigate the pain.
Shakes-Fear@reddit
They threw Tory out because he swore on the first test, not Adam.
But I do agree, they should have done another five who did the swearing test first and then the non-swearing test.
EngineersAnon@reddit
I wanted to see a third test using minced oaths (fudge, goshdarn, etc.) and/or fictional curses (BSG's frak, for example).
rosmaniac@reddit
Baby hippos!
Godenyen@reddit
The episode where the test intersections. One test they have someone direct traffic, but they do it at one car at a time and from a different lane. I've been trained to direct traffic, and it can be efficient if you know what you are doing. You can clear out 1-2 lanes quickly, then switch to the others and do the same thing. That one bothered me.
SomeDetroitGuy@reddit
The ones on distracted driving. They downplayed the effects of drunk driving as the two who were driving weren't even at the legal limit to drive and when they did their "distracted driving" test, they were having the driver doing complex mental tasks while on the phone instead of just talking.
Lightbringer741@reddit
I'm still bitter about the one with fecal matter on the toothbrush. THEY SHOULD HAVE TESTED THEM RIGHT OUT OF THE PACKAGE.
Past_Ad5967@reddit
I often think of the episode where Adam was trying to trick the police dog. He does the full shower and gets in a hazmat suit. Then instead of just leaving or having an accomplice spray the shower water around, he goes out in his “clean state” and sprays tall grass with his scent effectively contaminating the outside of his suit so the dog can smell him again.
I really don’t know if it would have made a difference, but it was for sure an idiotic thing to do if you’re trying to eliminate your smell.
Rheaghal@reddit
Cannonball vs Splinters. They got every element of this wrong, including defining what they were testing (it was described half a dozen different ways, each of which would have had differing test procedures and outcomes).
They never actually tested splinters - they pivoted immediately to testing slivers, needle- shaped things that we all pull out of our finger every year. Splinters have mad, pointy ends and jagged edges, and if you get impaled by one, you don't pull it out, you push it through. And they tested the deadliness by throwing it hard at flesh, rather than by having the flesh fall on the splinter (sliver, in this case).
A for cannon balls, they tested how many carcasses could a cannon ball kill if a cannon ball could kill carcasses, but that's not the point. This issue is how likely is a cannon ball to hit anyone at all? A 72 gun ship (36 guns a side) is manned by 800-1200 crew members. If you are trying to shoot that many people with 36 guns, you will run out of ammunition before you make the ship unable to be managed. Cannons exist to punch holes in the hull below the waterline, tear through the rigging, take down a mast. Make the ship unable to be managed no matter how many people on board.
A gun crew consistently shooting when aimed between deck level and six feet above would get a flogging.
They assumed the issue was immediate death, when it's nothing of the sort. It's a ship captain wiring his report to the Admiralty two weeks after the battle, saying he threw this many over the side who died from cannon ball wounds, and that many from splinter wounds.
Spoiler: the splinter deaths number will ALWAYS be greater, given the number of splinters created after a couple of broadsides and the fact that sailors worked without shoes or shirts much of the time.
Versipilies@reddit
The one that really stuck in my head was them trying to cut a katana with another katana. Instead of going edge to edge, as would likely happen with two people swinging a sword, is a smaller area for the impact to concentrate and is the most stiff and brittle part of sword, they had an edge swinging into the flat side of another sword. The swords all just deflected on impact, as would be expected in such a scenario. Ive seen people chisel one knife through another edge to edge a dozen times, its not rocket science.
Wild_Locksmith_326@reddit
When they tested the eggs for a biorythm they looked like they used store bought eggs which would already be an inert object. Unfertilized refrigerated eggs would not have any response to measure.
Unable_Car5665@reddit
The one that got me was the earthquake machine and as also the step-break bridge.
“The MythBusters attached the resonator to the side of a large truss bridge to see whether the entire bridge would be shaken. While the resonator did match the bridge’s frequency and produce a vibration noticeable 100 ft away, it was not strong enough to be considered an earthquake.”
While not an earth tiny resonator causing vibrations would eventually destroy the bridge.
They marked it busted despite the fact:
They had to stop the test because of effects of the test on the bridge when they felt the vibrations.
This actually already factored into bridge design and bridges have collapsed due to natural effects like the way the wind hits them.
Step-break bridge has the same issue with marching in WW II was meant to cause the bridges to collapse. But the test was just really poor with automated out of sink boots. This is also a well documented event with bridges being designed to stop this happening.
boltropewildcat@reddit
In all fairness, Adam has said he was pretty annoyed with Jamie for a long time after that myth.
Haphazard-Finesse@reddit
I mean, I’m annoyed at Adam for building a suspension bridge without anchoring the ends of the cables and expecting it to behave like a suspension bridge
Unable_Car5665@reddit
Oh I didn’t realise.
Do you know where he stated this or what he said?
boltropewildcat@reddit
It was on one of his livestreams. I'm paraphrasing, but he said that Jamie pushed hard for pneumatic powered boots, despite Adam being very against it because they wouldn't be in sync. Then much later after getting into a heated argument about another myth, they had some conflict resolution and Jamie said that when they argue like that, the science of testing the myth should come first, and Adam brought up the boots because he was still salty about it.
tiguellos@reddit
For me it was the corked bat myth. They built a machine to perform the swing then they measured the ball flight distance. When they switched from a regular bat to a corked one, the machine missed the ball because it would swing quicker due to less mass of the bat. So to fix it, they slowed the machine down so it would make contact at the right time. Which negated the test since swinging a bat faster is one of the benefits of a corked bat. They should have made the machine swing later to hit the ball with increased velocity.
AstroAppaMBA@reddit
Without a doubt it was the "can a plane take off on a treadmill.....
Literally didn't even need tested and their method was crap. They completely ignored the laws of physics and the forces of flight
rockfresh_126@reddit
In fairness they do literally state repeatedly in the episode, they already know what the result is going to be because the entire thing is based on a flawed premise. But sometimes show not tell
rosmaniac@reddit
So what would be a valid method? Agreed it doesn't need tested, because it's obvious it's going to take off. (If the belt goes fast enough to hold it back with bearing friction, the ground effect from the belt will give it lift just like how hard drive platters spinning lifts the heads of that hard drive, which flies just barely off the surface of the disk).
Browncoatinabox@reddit
Honestly they got quite a few wrong. Wrong methodology or reading the data wrong to not knowing what they are doing to not having enough time to properly do the experiment.
praxic_despair@reddit
It was entertainment first and rigorous science second. They kind of used the scientific method but their isolation of variables was sloppy. Whether that was for entertainment or budget reasons I don’t know.
Super fun show and helps you think about how science does approach things, but I never take Mythbuster proved it as actual evidence of it being a fact.
Browncoatinabox@reddit
I think a lot of fans and non fans get that wrong. You are completely right it was an entertainment first and take everything with a pinch of salt. I know the hosts want to stand by their results and nothing against them but they got so much wrong.
egordon326@reddit
The sample size was mainly JUST THEM! It is a "science"show with improper scientific methods. But I still love the show!
numbersthen0987431@reddit
Then again, they are all prop designers and aren't scientists, and no one has ever claimed that were more than that. They dabble in science as a hobby, but they aren't scientists by any regard.
PessemistBeingRight@reddit
To (mis-, probably) quote Adam, "the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down". If you follow the scientific method (which they were occasionally able to do when the meddlers behind the scenes gave them enough leeway), record your data properly and present your methodology and findings for peer review, you should be able to call yourself a scientist.
Other than elitism, there is no reason someone with no qualifications at all couldn't get a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal if they did all the legwork. If Adam and/or Jamie have even a single paper published, then they're a scientist.
And I'll be damned, would you look at that. Each of them have their names listed as authors on peer reviewed papers.
numbersthen0987431@reddit
It's more about how they (the team) perceive themselves and their roles on the show, and how they try to present their show
They don't try and pretend that they're scientists, the fully admit that they're just prop people who are trying to solve myths while dabbling in science but focusing on fun/entertainment.
At no point do they try to present their show as a "scientific show", and that's the difference.
I'm not dismissing the MythBusters Team and their accomplishments here, but I want to address this point you brought up:
"Published" and "peer reviewed" are very vague terms that can be used to spread fake science. You can "publish" a paper on any kind of site that will host it, and you can have "peer reviewed" papers that go through non-scientists who don't understand it but they technically did "review it".
Terrance Howard is a good example of this. He has a few published papers, and so people take him serious, but all of his papers are nonsense.
PessemistBeingRight@reddit
You know full well that I meant in a reputable scientific journal and suggesting otherwise comes across as disingenuous.
Also, tell me you didn't open the link without opening the link. Adam and Jamie are published in New Scientist, The Chemical Educator and Antiquity. These are not Terrance Howard level papers, they're the real deal despite (to my knowledge) neither gentleman holding a scientific qualification. Adam himself is on record stating that he holds nothing higher than a high-school diploma, according to a tweet he made in 2019.
FrickinLazerBeams@reddit
They were always pretty clear that they weren't being properly rigorous about these things. I think overall, promoting the kind of curiosity and "let's try to actually figure this out" approach was a really positive thing even if they made mistakes - especially since most people's approach to life is "this is hard to understand, or must be a mystery, I give up🤷♂️".
Glass_Hunter9061@reddit
I remember a Q&A with Adam talking about how the one myth he was proudest of was something like "can shooting a bullet in the air kill you when it falls" because they did so many samples. He said it was one of the few times that they actually followed the scientific method and could have legitimately wrote a paper about it.
42Cobras@reddit
I thought they did publish the data from that episode.
Glass_Hunter9061@reddit
Maybe! I might be misremembering, it might have been that part of the reason he was so proud of it was that they were able to publish.
42Cobras@reddit
I could also be misremembering. No idea.
RealJonathanBronco@reddit
The more I hear from Adam and now Mythfits, the more I blame the producers for a majority of that.
Specialist_Ad9073@reddit
Between them and Richard Rawlings and Co, the complaints I hear about Discovery producers makes me understand how it was a world where David Zazlav was created and thrived.
Oodoughnut@reddit
The Carlos Hancock sniper shot was a complete mess. They used the wrong caliber of ammunition in the wrong type against a modern day scope. It’s almost as if they wanted the myth to be busted.
Ok-Bookkeeper-4733@reddit
Yes brandon harrera proved the shot could be done with the correct equipment, and I think it only took 3 shots to do it.
rosmaniac@reddit
They revisited this one with the correct equipment and confirmed it.
Oodoughnut@reddit
Oh I hadn’t seen that I’ll have to go check it out.
rosmaniac@reddit
Episode 75 Myths Redux https://mythresults.com/episode75
Oodoughnut@reddit
Just watched it they still get it wrong but at least listed as plausible
4dwarf@reddit
Here is a YouTube vid of someone actually pulling off Carlos Hathcock's scope shot.
https://youtu.be/oWy3hWqpeFU?si=vYZPLtaJzGjwXnJs
AnynameIwant1@reddit
I don't think they got that one wrong. Were they perfect with methodology, no, but that one has always been a old wives tale not based in any reality. I'm sorry, but you probably just think it is because you grew up doing it instead of using an actual air freshener like most civilized people.
jsweeney1125@reddit
How about the one about walking vs running in the rain? They found walking was better but did not cover their head -thus rain hitting the top of their head wasn't counted.
....giving a clear advantage to walking.
Alex_Werner@reddit
I only watched this once, when it aired, but one that I thought was particularly poorly done was testing the expression "throws like a girl". Clearly, the way to test this is to get video of lots of children throwing, both boys and girls, find some way to blur out any gender-identifying details in the video (possibly using mocap, or just people wearing baggy clothes and masks or something), then ask other people "is this a boy or girl throwing", and if people can guess right better than random chance, then it's a real phenomenon. (Maybe with slightly better statistics.
What they did, as I recall, is prove that some girls are very good at throwing. Duh.
Boris-_-Badenov@reddit
the insult is based on how the arm moves, not how badly they throw.
flawed premise
P_Bunyan@reddit
I still think about “do you get sucked out of an airplane if there is explosive decompression” not only would this need to be conducted at altitude to be truly accurate, THEY FAILED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE PLANE IS GOING 500 MPH. Busted despite many such well documented incidents.
Boris-_-Badenov@reddit
they tested peeing on an electric fence, but only increased amount of liquid, not rate.
test was inadequate
16BitBattleship@reddit
Mine is the ship sinking sucking you down. They used such a tiny boat and “busted” a well documented event that happens when large vessels sink.
If they didn’t have the means to test it properly they shouldn’t have tested it and made a verdict!
tankerkiller125real@reddit
I mean I can replicate the result in the pool with Lego figurines and the bigger Lego boats. They easily could have tested this properly on a smaller scale.
vita10gy@reddit
Titanic bothered me because they basically vindicated the movie, proving it was a boyancy issue not a space issue, but then ruled on the side of the Internet turds because Jack technically could have rigged up some life jackets to help it float.
Jeep_1942@reddit
This one bugged me as well. It would have been easy to test buoyancy and make a scale person with similar buoyancy to test with the size vessel they had.
Both_Organization854@reddit
Bull in a china shop
ce402@reddit
There were three that really got me and actually turned me off the show. I realized that if they’re blowing the experiment on something I actually know about, then what about all the ones where I don’t understand what they’re testing.
First one was the “can you be catapulted out of a cherry picker” And they stacked a couple of conex containers up, welded extensions onto a 40’ boom lift’s axle, balanced it on top, and turned it into a giant catapult. Except there was no stop-bar, so it just spun and flung the dummy into the ground at the bottom. Cool, no shit I could have told you that would happen.
Now run the stick out straight horizontal, and drive it off an 18” drop where the front wheels stop and watch what happens to Buster. While I don’t know what will happen there, I’ll tell you what happened to me when I went off a 4” drop with the stick only half-way, and I went into the air, foot came off the deadman switch and got slammed into the rail.
Then there was the windows down versus air conditioning one, which was more efficient. So many issues with that.
They picked Ford Explorers that already have a high drag coefficient, so windows down/up will have a much smaller effect on the total drag to begin with, as opposed to a small sedan. Then they chose to drive at 45mph instead of highway speeds. Drag increases at the square of velocity; if they had even picked it up to 65 it would have shown vastly different results. Then they decided to ignore the ECU data, because it measures air, not fuel, and that could be inaccurate. Ignoring of course, that the ECU measures the air going into the engine in the first place in order to PRECISELY meter the fuel. Even if it doesn’t measure the fuel used directly, working the math backwards is just as valid.
WAY more valid than, checks notes, SIPHONING THE GAS OUT OF THE TANK WITH A HOSE. FFS, if they wanted to empty the tanks and add a measured quantity of fuel, they could have disconnected the gas line front he fuel rail, jumped the solenoid for the fuel pump, and just pumped the tank dry that way. Like I’ve done multiple times to get rid of contaminated fuel.
I would have been fascinated to see the results of an actual, valid experiment that tested two vehicle types, an efficient economy car where the air conditioner load would meaningfully tax the car’s engine against a larger SUV where you wouldn’t even notice the extra load, and then try to figure out where the crossover speed was, that the drag rise now overcame the air conditioner load.
At least they fixed their one about frozen vs thawed chickens against airplane windshields where they shot them both at a small trainer that was never designed to withstand a bird strike anyway.
After those, I realized the whole premise of the show wasn’t about busting myths, but making a cool experiment for TV that will prove whatever they wanted to prove in the first place and I stopped watching.
epkeener2@reddit
The one from burn notice about using phone books around the insides of a car to protect from bullets always bugged me a little bit. In the show the main character specifically mentions that the people they are protecting themselves from will only have lower caliber handguns. They end up busting the myth by shooting through them with a .50 cal while the handgun bullets are stopped which proved what happened in the show was accurate.
DragonCat88@reddit
Felt like a “how do we bust it” more than “busted”.
rosmaniac@reddit
They just wanted to go Kentucky Ballistics before Kentucky Ballistics was a thing.
blinden@reddit
Baseball runner sliding vs running standing up. It's supposed to be for a post at first where the runner is allowed to run through the base without being at risk. They had the runner stopping at the bar for some reason like a play at 2nd or 3rd.
RegulusKhan@reddit
They also messed up the corked bat myth. They were testing if the corked bat made the balls jump off the bat more, when in actuality, people cork bats so that it's lighter and you can swing it harder
KotoElessar@reddit
Doesn't matter, and as they said in the episode, it's the sulphur in the match tip. Particles of sulphur are entering your nose and overpowering the scent of excrement.
If it works for you, great! But the tiny aerosolized particulate that is in the air is still entering your nose.
badacctname@reddit
Helium in a football. They measured distance and not hang time.
Potato-Engineer@reddit
The effect of helium is negligible. The vast majority of the weight of a football is in the shell, not the air. Did you see the episode where they lifted a child with helium balloons? It took thousands. The helium in a football is less than the helium in one balloon.
That's a myth that could have been debunked with a pen and paper. (Mythbusters has done several myths like that.)
badacctname@reddit
I didn't see the one with the kid. That makes sense now tho. Something I probably should have looked into more rather than complaining. Lol thanks.
Noble_Rooster@reddit
The one where samurai catch arrows, and they built the machine rig to catch the arrow as it was being released right next to the bow. literally just testing how quickly a stationary hand can close, rather than human reflexes and “swinging” with the arrow to catch it. It really didn’t matter much but for some reason I think about that episode all the time
iDrGonzo@reddit
The combustion of sawdust in the air. They did not make an effective dispersal system. I've seen it happen with my own two eyes.
Konseq@reddit
Are you sure it isn't just smelling like burnt matches after that? Maybe you personally just aren't sensitive to that because I do smell burnt matches when somebody does that and it is not pleasant.
perdovim@reddit
The myth about soda rotting teeth quicker than water (forget how they phrased it), a friend had done the same experiment for a project in a science class and gotten the exact opposite results. My friend's dad is a dentist and monitored the experiment, so I know it was done with proper scientific rigor...
plaurenb8@reddit
Honestly, I freaking loved and still love the show. My main complaint now and even back then isn’t about one myth or result, etc. What bothered me was when either team had to LEARN a skill to then test it. It always made sense to me that not everyone knows or has done everything. Too often, the show didn’t know when to just call a pro to test something rather than show the teams dramatically learning entirely new skills.
Reasonable_Pay4096@reddit
Running cheap vodka through a Britta filter to clean up the taste. I was in college when that episode aired & had done it. Yes, it works.
ZeroSumHappiness@reddit
What do you mean? They did demonstrate that it improved the flavor. To such a degree that Jamie was able to line them up in order. They just concluded that it still wasn't as good as good vodka to start with and the cost in filters widened the price gap.
Reasonable_Pay4096@reddit
If I remember correctly (and I may not, I only watched it that one time nearly 20 years ago), they ran the vodka through each filter just once and used that to argue the cost in filters wasn't worth it.
Yeah, if you're buying 12 filters it's going to be more expensive than buying good vodka. But that's not what college students do. We were running it through the same filter a few times. You could clean up 4 or 5 bottles before having to change it out.
CyberpunkVendMachine@reddit
I believe the reason they had so many shots of vodka to test was because each one was run through the filter a different number of times, and hidden among them was an expensive vodka and a cheap unfiltered vodka.
SnappyDogDays@reddit
For me it was the falling on cement vs water.
The theory that from a certain height, hitting water was like hitting cement.
The problem I had with it was that I want to know what's the equivalent height you'd fall into water where it would feel like hitting cement or the ground?
Is belly flopping 25 feet into water the same as 5 feet on land?
If you belly flop 100 feet is that 25 feet on the ground?
they only ever did equivalent heights.
CyberpunkVendMachine@reddit
IIRC, they tested a height that would give you terminal velocity.
SnappyDogDays@reddit
I think they did, but what equivalent would that be against cement is what I was left wondering. 5 inches or 3 feet.
TheRussinGopnik@reddit
I personally always hated when they tested blind firing. They took like 3 shots in the most pathetic way possible. Please show me a example of blind fire where they fire so few times. It's ment to 1 get enemies to get down and 2 maybe hit someone by shooting alot not 3 times
Thefirstargonaut@reddit
The one that bugged me was the fuel economy one, where they tested two vans by driving them in on a track for an until they ran out of gas.
THEY NEEDED TO DO THE EXPERIMENT TWICE!
One time with Adam in van 1 and Jamie in van 2, then they needed to switch. That still bugs me years later.
djgengar@reddit
I always thought they did do experiments more than once just didn’t always make the cut
jwade1971@reddit
I noticed as well when they were running the engine completely with hydrogen. They turned off the fuel pump, the intent for the fuel economy was to run the engine on gasoline with just a trace of hydrogen vapor in the mix to improve fuel economy. I’ve seen YouTube videos that showed it actually works. The problem is the oxidation, you need stainless steel exhaust and pretty much the combustion chamber as well
Czar_Petrovich@reddit
Mine was the up-sized Newton's Cradle episode, where they tried to see if the energy transfer would scale up. They designed massive steel spheres to test it, but made a huge mistake: they couldn't feasibly make the spheres so they made big steel discs with hollow metal domes on the top and bottom to make them look like spheres.
So... Energy won't transfer through a disc the same way it would through an actual sphere. Both Jamie and Adam should have caught this immediately but went on with what would inevitably be a failed experiment.
blizzard7788@reddit
Hitting two hammers together. I actually sent them an email to tell them they got it wrong. BTW, they did not respond. The myth is hitting the faces of two hammers together will make them shatter. They made an elaborate machine to swing both hammers at the same time and hit in the middle. Something that never happens in real life. Now, if you strike a piece of wood with a straight claw hammer, and bury the claw in the wood with the face pointing up. You can then hit the face with another hammer and not get any bounce. This technique also happens all the time on a job site. I have witnessed two occasions where this happened on the job, and the hammer in the wood had pieces break off. One of the times, a piece flew into the arm of a co-worker. I was able to retrieve it with some tweezers.
424Impala67@reddit
And that they were quantifying "exploding" as complete destruction of the head. When most people would say their hammer exploded if a few chunks flew off.
blizzard7788@reddit
If part of the head decides to leave and embed itself in someone’s arm. Then, it’s only semantics. Which they tended to do a lot of. I stopped watching when every other episode was an explosion or duct tape.
LiveLongAndProspurr@reddit
For many myths, only an outcome that they liked was called a "result."
Malakai0013@reddit
That's just simply not true. Tons of myths went against what they predicted, and many times they go into depth and detail about how "any result is a result."
LiveLongAndProspurr@reddit
I agree that they evolved to doing what you said. Perhaps the ones I'm watching now are earlier shows where they were finding out how to present things.
butt_honcho@reddit
Gunpowder Engine bugged me. One, because they destroyed the gasoline engine trying to get it to run on gunpowder, and then declared it busted when it didn't work. It's true that it would probably never have run on gunpowder, but by the time they were done with it it wouldn't have run on anything, so they didn't actually prove it. And two, because gunpowder-powered mechanisms absolutely do exist - that's how machine guns work.
Ketzer_Jefe@reddit
There are some tractors and airplanes that use shotgun blanks to start (or at least used to. They are very old and rare now) but an engine could easily be made to run on gunpowder. It just wouldn't be nearly as efficient as gasoline or diesel.
butt_honcho@reddit
Slight quibble: an engine that uses blanks as starters isn't running on gunpowder, any more than an engine with an electric starter runs on electricity.
agent_uno@reddit
What really got me to stop believing in them were the episodes where they breathed N2O2! I mean who the hell would believe that?
JJHall_ID@reddit
Which episodes are you referring to? I remember N2O (nitrous oxide) and SF6 (sulphur hexaflouride) both of which are safe in controlled conditions, but I don't remember N2O2 (dinitrogen dioxide.)
agent_uno@reddit
apparently a /s was needed for my comment
DannyHusk42@reddit
Superheated water in the microwave. I recall them not looking at bubble nucleation or not counting its importance. I remember a Facebook post that had it correct and I corrected people based on this episode until I found out Mythbusters was wrong. Seemed like a really basic thing to look up instead of inferring the wrong thing.
inkedbutch@reddit
every time they tested the cleanliness of a toilet seat and swabbed the side of the seat where your thigh would be instead of the back centre of the seat where your ass crack is
Skwonkie_@reddit
The run/walk in the rain one they got wrong.
OliB150@reddit
I can’t really remember the details of it any more but I always remember being annoyed by the methodology or outcome of the windows open/closed for a hurricane/tornado.
CatoFreecs@reddit
I had an issue with the man vs. Female, where they tested based on existing day to day tasks in which some o the women said "yeap, this is my morning" that for me fully ivalidsted the test as there is experience bias