Oh wow, I've seen Braniac. They started showing it in the last days of TechTV here in the states, and it really did seem pretty awful. I remember thinking "this is the kind of crap I'd expect from Americans."

Yeah, sometimes their process is not very good. Other times they seem to put a lot of thought/science/math into the experiments. The brace position comes to mind. At least, they put a lot of thought into it until they actually got into the contraption. Now that was stupid.