I used to respect ABC as a source of genuine news. But I simply cannot get over Anna Hipsley’s excuse for an article posted on the ABC Science & Technology news site yesterday. A 15-year-old student from Adelaide has recreated the Mythbusters experiment proving that a goldfish’s memory lasts more than 3 seconds. Now I’m all for youngens getting into science, but there are several problems with this story that have really got my goat.
This is NOT news. It was busted more than FOUR years ago on a Mythbusters episode which originally aired on January 25, 2004.
Kudos to the kid for reproducing the results using exactly the same technique as the Mythbusters experiment. Using colour conditioning to feed the fish, then teaching them to navigate obstacles. But writing “a 15-year-old schoolboy from Adelaide has just debunked that theory.” I’m sorry, but that sounds a lot like the student is being credited with some kind of original discovery. Hipsley even has the cheek to say “myth busted” in the title of the article, yet ZERO reference is made to the Mythbusters experiment.
Credit where it’s due, please.
First of all “debunked” means to discredit. There wasn’t ever a claim in the article that the school boy was the first. So she missed the episode of Mythbusters. not everyone watches it. And if an expert in the field tells her its the first he’s heard of anyone conducting that particular experiment…don’t you tyhink that’s fair enough?
The kid probably watched Mythbusters and recreated their experiments, which is awesome! Science is all about reproducing results to confirm hypotheses. But it was the *exact* same technique. Right down to the colour used to train the fish and teaching them to “escape an artificial trawl”. Mythbusters used plastic walls with holes - same thing.
My main gripe is that the event has just been so over-hyped in the local media. The whole article reads as if it’s some amazing new discovery, when frankly it’s old news.
Adam and Jamie probably weren’t the first to do it either. But they were the first that I know of to publish the results in popular media.
What sort of expert in the field wouldn’t be aware of the Mythbusters experiment?