What I would ask Tour

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The audience shouldn’t be heckling in the first place. They should watch the debate and then wait to the Q&A to ask questions. I do agree Dave wasn’t doing himself any favors with his constant interruptions and talking over James Tour, nor his repeated accusation that Tour is lying.

I also agree with Dave’s point that the audience obviously doesn’t know squat about the subject so their heckling/laughing/cheering stuff is cringeworthy. And yes that would go for both sides generally. “Yay our guy said something forcefully and declared the other guy doesn’t know anything/lies/obfuscates so we’re winning now.” I just can’t understand why people think debates are a valuable gauge of anything. As someone who has been following the subject of the origin of life a lot my impression is that the whole thing was worthless theatrics.

I think Tour asks valid questions, but our ignorance of these specific questions don’t substantiate his point that we’re “clueless” about the origin of life. Tour has done himself no favor by running around making grandiose claims like that about the entire subject. Omg if Dave Farina can’t draw how the coupling reaction for lysine and asparagine that avoid side-chains would proceed in water, on the blackboard, it’s because we’re clueless, or it means Dave can’t read and understand papers and Tour can? Uhm no. It doesn’t mean that at all and it’s obvious. Yet we heard that the people in the audience start yelling and laughing every time Tour tried to pull the “draw the reaction” stunt. Clearly the people who are Tour fans thought that was somehow very significant and supported Tours conclusion for the debate topic.

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Should have stopped typing at this point.

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I’m of almost the same generation, and I have the same reaction. And there’s no need to apologize for your reaction, since it is a wholesome reaction. Civilization, gentlemanly manners, dignified comportment of people representing professions or academic subjects – these things take centuries to build up, but they can be torn down in a few generations when a sort of vulgar willfulness takes root in the hearts and minds of scientists and other public figures. That this sort of not merely rancorous but snarling and personal debate could take place on a major university campus is a sign of how far our academic and general culture has fallen.

There were some healthy signs, though. At one point, after Dave abused the audience, there was a moment of stunned silence. At another point, one of his cruder ad hominem remarks drew boos from the audience. And a few people, after realizing early on the tone Dave was going to take in what was supposed to be a scientific debate at university, got up and walked out. So there still are people out there who think that debates must have not only good contents but civilized decorum.

Dave thought that it was appropriate to bring the low cultural standards of the blogosphere to a university campus. By doing so, he lowered the standards of the university campus itself. Tour for the first part of the debate (his opening statement) upheld those standards, but later started to abandon them himself, by talking over Dave, interrupting, and raising his voice. Neither person gave a good account of himself, but Tour was, relatively speaking, more disappointing, because it was unreasonable to expect maturity or good manners from Dave, whereas it was reasonable to expect self-control from Tour in the setting of his own academic institution. Absolutely speaking, however, Tour never descended as far into the muck as Dave did.

The moderation was horrible, i.e., virtually absent when it was most needed, but the biggest flaw was that the debate took place at all. Dave is a nobody in science; he’s a science groupie, who can do no better than try to interpret articles that origin of life specialists have written, with no guarantee that he will understand the articles correctly. Why not have the people who actually produced the articles defend them by themselves, and cut out the unreliable middle man? The debate should have been between the big boys: between Tour and one or more of the origin of life researchers that Tour has criticized. Such a debate would have been (a) more informed; and (b) in all probability more civilized.

By the way, I submitted a new piece of my own on the debate, but it hasn’t been reviewed by a moderator yet (last I checked). It should be up in the next day or so.

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Hey on this at least we agree.

The debate only needs to exist in the peer reviewed literature. On stage you don’t have time to read an article or check a claim being made, or to sit there and think about what is being said, to find research relevant to to a new question that might have come up, or anything. Which is why debates are primarily theatrics of no real academic, much less scientific value. The whole thing is too influenced by the arbitrarily limited time, personality, public speaking/presentation experience, rhetorical tricks, and appearance. Things that simply don’t matter when it comes to the actual substance behind the subject.

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Um, with all due respect, Tour and his opinions are of no more consequence or importance to the OOL research community than are, say, you and yours, @Eddie. Tour is not a “big boy” when it comes to this scientific field. Whyever would serious scientists engage with someone who, when it comes to this subject, has taken leave of all scientific (and professional) sensibility?

Unseemly as it was, this is the sort of interaction and the decorum that Tour hisself has chosen.

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I agree, especially after what we just witnessed. A debate requires an audience, but which audience? If that be scientists, they prefer papers for all the reasons you mention. If the object is to lay out the strength of the respective positions so that a lay audience can settle on a better informed decision, we have just witnessed why that is utterly hopeless. How is some layperson who barely remembers what an ion is, supposed to evaluate who is correct concerning lab protocols, methods and materials, reasonable generalizations of figure 7, analytical techniques, and graduate level organic chemistry? But all that is exactly where the substance of contention lies. So for the audience, if the material is dumbed down the debate is useless, and if the material is not dumbed down most of the audience is left wondering, what are they even talking about?

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If that’s true – if the OOL research community finds Tour inconsequential – then obviously they did not beg Dave Farina to help them out against Tour, did they? They would just ignore Tour, correct? So Farina is crusading obsessively against Tour for some motive of his own, not because the OOL life community needs any assistance against Tour. Correct? And what might that motive be? Based on the debate, and sneers Farina utters elsewhere, it would seem that one strong motive was to express Farina’s strong dislike of religion in general and Christianity in particular (since that’s Tour’s religion).

But it’s not clear that what you say is true. Some OOL proponents have in fact debated Tour, so his criticism must be bothering some of them. For example:

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Um, when I debate antievolutionists on forums like this, it’s not because their assertions are in any way bothersome or threatening. Some people just like to talk science.

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Not even that. Why would they even be aware of Tour? He has not published any OoL focused papers in scientific journals, so there is nothing to ignore.

Tour’s lab is very productive and credible in the world of carbon materials and nano applications, here is his publication list. Despite the voluminous record, he himself has chosen to firewall his day job from the side gig.

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Correct. I mean I would definitely be surprised if anyone in the OOL research community reached out to Dave to carry some sort of flag for them. More so if they actually felt they needed help and begged him.

Such flowery prose Eddie. Oh my!

Correct.

Yep. Correct.

That Tour is spreading misinformation about the field and he thinks that’s wrong?

No I think mine’s better. I think yours is typical right-wing religious conservative spin. “They hate us for our religion, they’re persecuting Christians, waaah.” Dude come on.

Ahh we’ve slipped from “the OOL research community” finding Tour “consequential” enough to “beg Dave Farina to help them out against Tour”, to “some of them” [Lee Cronin] being “bothered” enough to go discuss whether we’re close to solving the origin of life.

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I understand and agree with the first sentence. I agree that debates would make a poor research and discussion tools for the level of fine detail. But they can – if properly conducted – still be a good pedagogical tool, to explain to people what the main differences of opinion in a field are, and why the experts disagree.

I have never suggested that we should settle the question of the origin of life by having Tour debate someone, and then decide the right answer based on the debate. The idea is to see the views laid out, and the main arguments and counterarguments. The debate is for pedagogical purposes. If both debaters understand that, and cooperate, they can as a pair educate the viewing public. But they both have to have that pedagogical goal, and the format of the debate must facilitate that. If, on the other hand, their goal is not pedagogical, but political – to humiliate the person on the other side and persuade the audience that they have “won” – then it will be a contest of rhetoric, with no educational value.

In this debate, both proponents had motives that were too combative, and there was no cooperation between them to produce a balanced picture of the possible positions so that the listeners would be educated. Thus, it failed to do the only good thing that such a debate could do. But that was predictable from the start, given the two people involved and given the history of their interaction.

The response to the debate on YouTube does, however, vindicate me on a separate point. I have said many times here that regardless of who is right or wrong about ID, creation, etc., it is wrong to bully, demonize, mispresent, personally insult, impute bad motives, show disrespect, etc. Well, the thousands of comments flowing in on the Tour/Farina debate indicate that many scientists and even many atheists find personal insults, accusations of bad motives, etc. to be out of place in a public debate, and there seems to be a consensus that whether or not Farina was right, he was certainly an offensive jerk, and did no good for his side of the debate by being such a jerk.

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That’s not what I said, and that’s not what I meant. I was not speaking of “persecution” at all, just personal hostility to religious ideas and beliefs. He is not the only one who displays it. Dawkins does, Coyne does, P. Z. Myers does, and several people here do.

If that is his only motive, he could express it without a single remark about Tour’s religion. The fact that he not only mentions Tour’s religion but constantly lays stress on it means that his goal is more than to identify scientific misinformation. He can’t resist sticking in the digs. And from his other videos, one can see it’s almost an obsession with him.

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No, I would dispute that there is any real pedagogical value in having experts debate their differences of opinion on matters that are inherently technical, to a lay audience that is simply not equipped in terms of prior education and the unavoidable constraints on time, to fully analyze viewpoints that would have to be dumbed down.

I generally have the impression that people who love debates so much are people who lack real substance.

The main differences of opinion within the origin of life field(of whom neither Tour or Dave are members, and about which both seem to lack pertinent knowledge of it’s breadth and history) are expressed already in the peer reviewed literature.

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Nope. Only in your culture war-obsessed mind. That’s why you apply so many violent metaphors to debates.

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To return to the topic of the Dave vs Tour debate, I really disliked most of the audience questions. Aaron Ra straight up made no sense to me. He basically just rambled about parts of evolutionary history that had zero relevance to the debate topic, and a similar complaint goes to the people demanding Dave provide a justification for reason on naturalism. Completely irrelevant to the topic, and frankly I have zero interest hearing either man’s opinions on such matters. Neither of them are philosophers.

One question that particularly irked me was when some dude got up and asked Dave why he thought “Tour was speaking over him so much”, when it was Dave that began that whole circus and Tour merely followed along. Dave wasted no opportunity to further smear Tour with accusations that Tour is speaking over Dave because he has nothing to say or whatever. Toe-curling.

There were perhaps three good questions asked, but one of them was botched by an ill-considered phrasing, that I think made Tour misunderstand it’s intended purpose.
Basically a guy asked if Tour was aware that many of his fans think that he has shown with his criticisms of the OOL research, that the OOL basically can’t work and that this proves God exists, and if Tour would “denounce this belief” or something to a similar effect. And I think Tour took him to mean if he would denounce their belief in God(which of course he wouldn’t as he said he doesn’t want to tell people what to believe), rather than (what I think the real question was about) denounce their faulty inference. Two rather different ways to understand that question and an important distinction. And of course since there was no time for clarification(proving once again the inadequacy of oral stage debates), we never got an answer to what I think is the more important point of that question. Does he in fact agree that they shouldn’t take his criticisms to imply that?

Another guy asked Tour about the coupling reaction he obsessed so much about baiting Dave to try and draw, how he knows that reaction is required at the origin of life, and this is where things went bad for Tour as it led him into his whole proteins and information thing where he is just completely out of his field. But we never got to see or hear why he was wrong about the things he said in response, because the guy asking the question could not ask follow-up questions, and Dave just stood around throwing insults instead of providing concrete real-world evidence that undermines a lot of the stuff Tour said in his answer.

I think the remaining questions were all crap and basically proved that close to nobody in the audience had the slightest comprehension of what was going on.

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I agree with much of your discussion about the question period.

There is little point in having a question period unless there is time for back-and-forth between the questioner and the person answering. I’d rather see 10 questions discussed in some depth than 30 questions answered hurriedly and superficially.

When I’ve been to scholarly conferences, the person asking the question can ask a follow-up question if the answer is not satisfactory, and often the speaker engages in a substantive dialogue with the questioner for two or three minutes. But here the questions and answers were restricted, more like the questions reporters get to ask politicians in a news scrum, where each news network is allowed only one brief question, and there’s no talk-back if the answer isn’t satisfactory. That may be (arguable!) adequate for typical political questions, but it doesn’t lead to intellectual clarity on scientific, philosophical, or other theoretical topics.

But of course the format matters little if none of the people asking the questions understand anything. I had assumed that as the debate was at Rice, there would be a number of Rice professors, grad students, advanced science undergrads, etc. in the audience, and that the questions would be more precise and useful. I was expecting that maybe one of Tour’s colleagues in chemistry, or a grad student of one such colleague, would stand up and object to something Tour said, or to something Dave said, and that from the conversation arising from the objection, I might learn something. But except for one question from a woman who seemed to know something specific about molecules, most of the questions weren’t that useful. Possibly the semester is over at Rice, and most of the faculty, grad students, and undergrads are gone? In that case, the audience would be largely people from the community or casual internet followers of origins debates; that might explain the low quality of the questions.

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Some times two men can vehemently disagree, and both be right and wrong, at the same time.

I think one of the final questions Dave and Tour debated was whether researchers had achieved complete self-replication with a ribozyme, with Dave saying yes (and referencing Joyce 2002 as an early example) while Tour vehemently denying it was able to fully self-replicate.

Here I think they were genuinely talking past each other.

The system referenced in Joyce 2002 is able to fully self-replicate, but not in the manner I assume Tour was thinking about.
Paul & Joyce 2002:

That ribozyme really is able to fully self-replicate from appropriate substrates. But it’s a ligase ribozyme that assembles new copies of itself from some rather large and complex substrates (basically 2 large fragments of itself) by basically just ligating them together. That does qualify for the definition of self-replication, and it is a ribozyme.

I’m not claiming to be able to Tour´s mind, but I’m trying to steelman Tour here and give a possible explanation for why he would insist ribozymal self-replication has not been achieved in the face of research really showing that it has. He did give a clue what he might have been thinking about when he started speaking about what “percentage” has been replicated.

I think Tour took Dave to be speaking about something akin to the “holy grail” of RNA world research, which is a generalist RNA-dependent RNA-polymerase ribozyme, that can fully copy it’s own sequence from an unfolded template, in addition to also being able to make complementary copies of other templates. Not a ligase ribozyme, but a universal generalist polymerase ribozyme that can use it’s own unfolded sequence as a template to polymerize a new one. Such a ribozyme has not been found yet, though Joyce and co-workers are actually close to achieving that.

My bold:

Abstract

An RNA polymerase ribozyme that has been the subject of extensive directed evolution efforts has attained the ability to synthesize complex functional RNAs, including a full-length copy of its own evolutionary ancestor. During the course of evolution, the catalytic core of the ribozyme has undergone a major structural rearrangement, resulting in a novel tertiary structural element that lies in close proximity to the active site. Through a combination of site-directed mutagenesis, structural probing, and deep sequencing analysis, the trajectory of evolution was seen to involve the progressive stabilization of the new structure, which provides the basis for improved catalytic activity of the ribozyme. Multiple paths to the new structure were explored by the evolving population, converging upon a common solution. Tertiary structural remodeling of RNA is known to occur in nature, as evidenced by the phylogenetic analysis of extant organisms, but this type of structural innovation had not previously been observed in an experimental setting. Despite prior speculation that the catalytic core of the ribozyme had become trapped in a narrow local fitness optimum, the evolving population has broken through to a new fitness locale, raising the possibility that further improvement of polymerase activity may be achievable.

Very close, but not quite there yet. It is a generalist polymerase ribozyme, but it can’t yet fully generate a copy of itself by using an unfolded copy of itself as a template. Both men were right about what they were saying, they were just talking about two very different systems and modes of self-replication.

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I appreciate your effort to be fair here, and give a cautious and qualified statement of the facts regarding self-replication. I don’t know enough about this material to say that your account is right, but it sounds plausible. And it was one of the things about the debate that I found most puzzling. Why was Tour so fiercely negating Dave’s claim? Was it sheer stubbornness, sheer refusal to accept the evidence Dave had produced? That struck me as unlikely. More likely, I thought, Dave’s claim might be true but there might be more to the story. And you have supplied an explanation which doesn’t impute bad motives to either participant.

This is actually a case where a better debating format – one where no jumping in was permitted, thus forcing people to listen and digest exactly what was being claimed before responding – might have enabled the participants to figure out that they were talking past each other.

Again, I appreciate your effort to seek clarity. There are some others here who, watching that exchange, would probably have been quick to say something like, “Dave presented Tour with a paper that showed self-replication had been achieved, and Tour angrily denied it, showing he had no respect for data or evidence but just wanted to defend his creationist world view.” You didn’t succumb to that partisan temptation, but tried to find out why each person might have asserted what he did; you gave each person credit for brains and intellectual honesty. If only that sort of careful sorting and suspension of judgment were more common around here!

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Actually, I think the person who asked the two to, essentially, say something nice about the other was laudable in trying to end the occasion with some sort of positive note. Unfortunately, Farina did not use the opportunity to crawl partways towards higher ground. It would have been easy and appropriate to acknowledge Tour’s work on carbon-based nanoengineering. (The man makes friggin’ nanites! How cool is that?)

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Agreed, forgot about that one. A missed opportunity to not, at the very least, be a total asshole.