Many people hate Spike TV for its crude, borderline misogynistic overtones. Nevertheless, Spike TV serves a purpose by filling the niche of hyper-masculine programming.
Spike’s original programming lineup includes “MANswers,” a show that takes stereotypically masculine questions and uses applied science to answer them.
The phrase “applied science” must be used loosely here, as this show is supposed to be comedic.
One proposed query was, “Can boobs wash your car?”
After making a reference to the Shore scale, a method of measuring softness, and consulting a dermatologist, “MANswers” busted out an answer that really wasn’t relevant to the original question.
Does the answer matter? Spike TV acquired an excuse to show its viewers cleavage for five minutes.
“MANswers” is one show utilizing what I call “bro science.”
“Bro science” is the fusion of the dispassionate discipline of science and the asinine enthusiasm of a 13-year-old boy who has just discovered boobs. Henceforth, I will further refer to “bro science” as B.S.
It’s the drive inside that causes us to spend entire afternoons watching Diet Coke and Mentos videos and then say, “Science, bro!”
We do not really learn anything of value. Spike TV has never claimed to create anything of real value.
However, B.S. has long since seeped into the programming lineups of semi-respectable channels.
Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” has forsaken its authentic documentaries of shark anatomy and zoology in favor of tastelessly portrayed shark attack stories.
The History Channel recently indulged in a bit of B.S. with its special, “How Beer Saved the World,” by proclaiming beer established modern health care and possibly civilization itself.
B.S. remains relatively harmless as long as it’s confined to entertainment and comedy, but scientists in Dublin, Ireland, are elevating B.S. to a new level.
Dubbed “Blood Wars,” biologists at Dublin’s Science Gallery have devised a setup to literally let blood samples fight one another.
White blood cells are extracted from two different individuals and placed in a Petri dish where they are induced into combat. Based on which individual’s white blood cells survive, it is determined who has the stronger immune system.
Winning blood samples then have the opportunity to face other opponents in a tournament-like fashion until a champion is declared.
Kathy High, the brainchild of the project, likens the ordeal to the World Cup.
She eventually hopes Blood Wars will be able to answer such questions as, “How do we think about blood?” and, “What does this material mean to us?”
While I am unsure how most people think about blood, I am
almost certain scientists already have an idea of what the “material means to us” — something to do with oxygen and remaining alive.
What would people like High do if I told her she was the world’s leading innovator of B.S.?
Most likely, she would tell me her research is producing more data on the processes behind cell division and interaction. But are we really going to learn information exclusively through Blood Wars and not other fields of research?
I am not a scientist, but I appreciate and guard the construction of science in the same way a music lover enthusiastically guards his or her favorite compositions.
High and her work with Blood Wars is a thundering power chord at the end of a beautifully written concerto.
You can have your Blood Wars, but at least admit it’s idiotic.
Maybe I am being unfair and should leave her and her fellow bro-scientists alone, but B.S. is spreading at an alarming rate — and we are all knee-deep in it.
Chris Freyder is a 21-year-old biological sciences junior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter
@TDR_Cfreyder.
 
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Contact Chris Freyder at [email protected]