I love the Mythbusters. Not just because I like to watch them blow stuff up. (I do), More importantly… infinitely more importantly… because those two goofy guys are teaching my son to love science, engineering, and experimentation. Yes, the clips are stripped down of any real rigor, but they have made science fun for thousands of teenager and young adults.
If just a few of them choose to pursue science, and just a few more support science in their communities, and a few more notice when the film industry bashes science or blames science for the ills of the world, or invents yet another monster because of “immoral science,” then we might move the needle just a little bit towards a country where science matters.
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I agree, my son LOVES Mythbusters and keeps making up experiments he wants to do when he’s grown up (like shoot two cars on rockets into each other about 100 feet up in the air – I’m not sure what myth he’s targeting, but something will get busted!).
However, I’d prefer him to pursue engineering, because it turns out that we have plenty of scientists – what we lack are enough engineers to take their interesting scientific ideas and actually make them do something useful.