But I DON'T like Mythbusters...

Archie has this up on his blog. I blatantly stole it. It could have been funny, but I would guess that even Zombie Feynman would have taken the opposite stance. In fact, this is so amazingly like a conversation I recently had via email (minus the Zombie moaning "brains... brains...") that I just had to post it again.

While I agree that Mythbusters encourages people to hold their beliefs up to test, the tests they construct are shoddy at best, and often a little foolish. They also only run a single trial before changing parameters, and in the end, if they force the issue hard enough, tend to stamp a myth "true" if they can do it, even though the situations don't match those of the "myth". Sure, people get a kick out of them blowing stuff up and dropping dummies out of a plane, but the experiments are often loaded in such a way as to be totally unrealistic, and there is never, ever any independent confirmation or repeat trials, nor multiple samples.

I don't like it, I don't trust it, and I won't be jumping out of any planes with an inflatable raft instead of a parachute any time soon.