Science is one of the world’s two most prestigious scientific journals, along with its British counterpart Nature. You might therefore assume that it would be in favour of debate – that it would maintain a staunchly pro-debate editorial stance. After all, debate is an essential part of the scientific process. Scientists publish their work; other scientists pick holes in it; and over time we get closer to the truth.
If humans were perfectly rational beings like Spock from Star Trek, debate wouldn’t be so important. But, of course, we aren’t such beings. We’re afflicted by conformation bias and conformity. We’re swayed by irrelevant factors like the desire to be held in high regard by our peers and the desire to have the evidence align with our political views. Which is why it’s crucial that we can check each other’s work and then hash out our differences.
But to Science, debate isn’t always a good thing.
On 21st June, the journal published an op-ed titled ‘Scientists shouldn’t debate gaslighters’. The context here is that Joe Rogan recently announced he would donate $100,000 to charity if “Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD” (as he calls himself on Twitter) agreed to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “on my show with no time limit”. This was in response to Hotez accusing Rogan of spreading “misinformation” in his podcast discussion with RFK.
“This approach sets up two huge problems,” writes Holden Thorp, the author of the Science piece. “First, it gives RFK’s garbage equal footing with principles that have been established by centuries of science. The second is that to a lay listener, the scientist just comes off as fitting the stereotype of a nitpicking nerd and RFK looks like a powerful communicator.”
Referring to RFK, Thorp writes that “most scientists aren’t prepared to take on his firehose of nonsense” and that “the scientific community desperately needs equally skilled pundits to defend science”. (He suggests “the political commentator Jon Stewart” as one possible candidate.)
I’m not convinced. To my mind, Hotez should accept the debate. This isn’t because I think RFK is right: I haven’t listened to his discussion with Rogan, and some of the things he said did sound pretty ridiculous (e.g., “WiFi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier and so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain”).
It’s because public debates can be highly informative. Hearing two people state their cases independently is almost invariably less informative than watching them have a debate.
Why? Because when you debate, you have to bring your A-game. You have to address the strongest points from the other side and you have to rebut the strongest counters to your own points. When you don’t debate, you can make your case appear stronger than it really is. So your audience may come away feeling more convinced than they really should.
Thorp would protest that public debates are simply “rhetorical matches” in which the more-factually-correct side stands little or no chance against the more-rhetorically-gifted side. But this isn’t my experience. And even if he’s right that “rhetorical skills” play an outsize role in public debates, I’d submit that “not being challenged” plays an outsize in non-debate settings.
What’s more, Thorp’s own article is full of rhetoric! He denounces RFK is an “anti-vax charlatan and spoiler presidential candidate”. He refers to Rogan’s offer as a “classic anti-science setup”. And he insists that “hucksters like RFK Jr. are skilled at flooding the zone with garbage”.
For better or worse, a lot of people want to hear what RFK has to say. If Thorp is actually interested in persuading them that RFK is wrong, he ought to welcome Rogan’s offer. No one that doesn’t already agree with Thorp is going to be convinced by his patronising and rhetoric-laden article.
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