'Three Things' - An Educational TV Show

There is a game that tends to be used as an icebreaker when a bunch of people meet one another for the first time. Each person says three things about themselves. However, only two of the things are true. Everyone else needs to guess which one the person made up.

This game could be converted into a TV game show fairly easily.

The average person tends to have a large number of preconceived notions about science that are simply false. Sometimes it happens because a news outlet reports misinformation, or at least unverified information. Other time people fall victim to illusions because of Hollywood. Other times, its simply because the universe doesn't always work in an immediately intuitively obvious way.

The show would be a game show with prizes. Each question would give them 3 options. Sometimes the options would just be facts. Other times they would be clips from a TV or print news source. All the choices would discuss some scientific principle. It could range from statements as simple as 'There is no peer-reviewed experimental evidence linking mercury to Autism' to something like 'tests have shown astrology to be no more accurate than random guessing.' News and print clips would of course be longer.

One of these statements would be incorrect. For news clips, rather than faking a clip, they would take archived footage of a news channel reporting non-science as science. The contestant would need to correctly choose the false statement.

After the answer was revealed, the show would spend a minute explaining why each true fact is true and spend time 'debunking' the false science.

In between questions the show could explain what the difference between pseudoscience and science are, what it means to be peer-reviewed, why 'certification' doesn't mean the same thing as 'credible' and other issues that the viewers may not necessarily know.

I envision such a show as a combination of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' and 'Myth Busters.' Such a show could easily be educational and entertaining. To introduce drama you could include many of the 'lifelines' from Millionaire (probably not the 50/50 lifeline unless you added a 4th true statement). You could also include one lifeline where the contestant is given additional information related to a choice of their choosing that is guaranteed to be factual.

This same format could easily be applied to topics beyond science as well. It could also easily translate into a computer game.

As long as the show was well directed, I could see it being a smash hit.