The priority on Mythbusters is always entertainment first, not science. It’s not best practices, it’s what is visually appealing. It’s not data driven, it’s shooting schedule. The skulls are not necessary tools, they are props. Adam Savage himself states that the goal is to “replicate the circumstances, then duplicate the results”, or in other words, create a spectical. Which again, is fine, but is not hard science. If you can’t tell the difference between hard science and television I don’t know what to do for you.

But I suspect you understand this already, and are motivated more by the excitement of eliciting a response by adopting a posture of “enlightened” objectivty, blowing the minds of us lesser beings, us superstitious cave dwellers, than by legitimately considering the finer points of profiting off of human remains or the needless destruction therof.

Is the problem that they’re filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology?

The problem is that “what happens when a superhuman being with a ring on punches you in the forehead” isn’t exactly an important question to answer.

This really isn’t any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic?

Again, yes. As it is not for science, it is for entertainment. Adam and Jamie are not scientists, they are special effects artists. And they are not conducting experiments, they are staging entertainment. They are not in a lab, they are in a special effects warehouse. They are not publishing their findings to Nature, they are editing them for a television audience. Mythbusters is not hard science, it is science themed entertainment. Which is fine. But these skulls belonged to real people and there is a power dynamic involved in where they come from, and who buys them, and what they’re used for.

I don’t think it’s an “incredibly romantic” position to wonder if it’s disrespectful or scientifically necessary to wrap a human skull in pig skin and then punch it with a robotic fist until it collapses for television.

The key distinction here is your will. The will of these people is unkown. Their consent is unkown. If you’re looking at the skulls for sale on the bone room for example, they don’t even know the specific age of most of the skulls and are forced to guess within a range. If they don’t even know how old they are how can they know with any certainty the circumstances of their death? Where in the world can you just find an unclaimed skull to sell? What are the chances that these skulls aren’t the skulls of poor people, or otherwise disenfranchised people? It doesn’t take much imagination to draw the conclusion that the ethics surrounding the buying and selling of human skulls, and then destroying them for no other reason than the momentary entertainment of of the global 1% is at the very best a grey area.

They do. They even go to a specific shop in one of the episodes: The Bone Room.

The Bone Room was famous - within its niche - around the world. Featured on Mythbusters, as well as having several appearances on local news magazines, written up in articles in local and nationwide publications, and listed in guidebooks, The Bone Room was a destination for travelers and one of the must-see places for locals to bring their visiting friends and relatives.

Greenland Shark

Greenland sharks have the longest lifespan of any known vertebrate, estimated to be between 250 and 500 years. They are among the largest extant shark species, reaching a maximum confirmed length of 6.4 m (21 ft) long and weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). They reach sexual maturity at about 150 years of age, and their pups are born alive after an estimated gestation period of 8 to 18 years.

Absolutely everything about them is interesting. And as far as an entity, they are a fantastic role model. The world would be a much better place if we were all more like the Greenland Shark.

Yet, I don’t see it posted in these comments yet.

I rewatched Mythbusters recently. It’s pretty disturbing, especially in the early seasons, how often they use actual human remains for what is essentially light entertainment. Like, they’ll destroy an actual human skull for shits and giggles. They had disproved the myth on setting off an airbag with a slim jim and firing it into the head of a would be car jacker, but still had to replicate the results, so just shot a slim jim into an actual human skull, cheering and laughing as it’s decimated. That was an actual person’s skull. How they sourced it, and where the source acquired it, who knows. I’m fairly certain there is a family somewhere though that would be mortified.

It’s quite clear the only way we’ll learn is the hard way. We’ll see how much smug entitlement we can sustain when the world moves on without us.