Of the questions that have troubled great thinkers these last few thousand years, the question of which TV science show is the best has proved among the hardest to resolve. This is partly because the science shows on television keep changing, but it is also a fact that work in the field has, until lately, been spotty and lackadaisical, undertaken more often by desperate science writers for an afternoon than by a dedicated specialist for an entire year. I want to thank the editors for giving me the time and space to pursue my own research to its full completion. Without further ado I can now reveal the best science show on television: Ghost Hunters, currently in its fifth preposterous season on cable television’s Syfy (né Sci Fi) Channel.
“No, it isn’t,” I hear you protest, and you have my sympathies, for that was my first reaction too. Like you, I subscribe to various high-end periodicals, where much has been written in recent years about the current golden age of science on television, and Ghost Hunters does not often get a mention. For Virginia Postrel, writing in The Atlantic back in 2007, it was dramas like
