Fight Science

[bushido_man96]

Lastly, I wanted to see if I could get a charity started for the TKD guy so he could buy himself a shirt...... I'll put down money says he does XMA.

Very funny! Looking at the way he did that series of kicks towards the end of the show, I would guess XMA and probably a lot of olympic style sparring.

[parkerlineage]

It's sad to see that martial artists make so little money that they can only afford to buy half a gi. Very sad.

[krunchyfrogg]

It wasa fun program, but there were many holes in the "scientific analysis" of a lot of it.

The Ninjitsu balancing act was kinda neat though!

[Jiffy]

What holes?

[Zorbasan]

i have national geographic here in aust, but i havent seen it. i will have to keep my eye out for it.

[krunchyfrogg]

What holes?

It's unfair to say that Boxing has the hardest punches, when the boxer himself is much physically stronger than the Kung-Fu practicioner, for instance (This applies for the other styles/attacks as well).

You don't know if the measurements are calculated correctly because the equipment might be damaged by an earlier participant, giving untrue results.

There are others, I'm sure, but I haven't watched it since it first aired. When it's on again, I'm sure I'll think of others.

[Orca]

In terms of experimental design, Fight Science fails miserably. They not only use only ONE practicioner as example for each "type" of art (never mind that each 'style' has many schools within. They also use people of different ages and different size, weight, height and body type. Probably they have different levels of proficiency.

For example the Muay Thai guy, Melchor, is pretty well-known, while the other guys are pretty obscure. So there is no way to tell if it is fair to compare them. The Karate dude I never heard of in my life, and his technique didnt seem to good to me according to traditonal karate standards. And so on.

Another example, They use a strong, heavy person to represent boxing and a small, athletic person for kung-fu. Based on what these representatives do, they conclude that boxing punches the hardest while kung-fu punches the fastest. Obviously, they have rigged the results from the beggining, based on their preconceptions about the art, and because they use a sample size of ONE!? for each style.

Conclusion? "Fight Science" was in fact not scientific at all, statistically speaking. Fancy technology doth not science make.

[Zorbasan]

yeh,

they should atleast try to use practioners of same size and skill level

[Jiffy]

All sounds about right to me. Good TV doesn't make bad science good.

[Zorbasan]

take mythbusters for example