This is gonna bit a bit of a rant like the old days of blogging. A few days ago we had anti-vaccine crank and poison pill presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. show up on Joe Rogan’s equally cranky podcast to talk about how vaccines are killing us all, or something. This led Professor Peter Hotez, an actual scientist and professor who works on vaccines, to call out the show for spreading misinformation.
Proving that we live in the dumbest of all possible timelines, Joe Rogan was angered by this, and more or less demanded that Hotez appear on his show to “debate” RFKj about vaccines, offering him $100k to do so and badgering him about it. This, in turn, led to antivaxxers showing up at Hotez’s home to yell at him and demand he “debate” on Rogan’s show.
Rogan, of course, full well knows that this sort of harassment is inevitable when he sics his followers on someone; he has nearly 12 million Twitter followers, and they are not exactly what I would call reasonable people, so stalking is a very foreseeable consequence of his actions. Hotez, for his part, was gracious and offered to talk to Rogan directly, but did not fall for the “debate” trap.
And it is a trap. What I want to talk about here, and rant about, is the notion that scientists somehow are obligated to perform public debates. Here’s one Roganbro’s tweet arguing that science is supposed to be “debated.”
Scientists do debate science, but do not do it in the traditional public person-to-person format. And there are very good reasons that we don’t.
Let’s start with a little history. If you think about the origins of debating, you probably think of ancient Greece, which is indeed where the Western world’s debating begins. But pretty much as soon as debating was a thing, there were people who abused it: the Sophists. Sophists were in essence professional debaters and public speakers; let me quote Wikipedia here, which gives a pretty concise summary:
In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly in Athens, “sophist” came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. “Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.” Sophists went to Athens to teach because the city was flourishing at the time. It was good employment for those good at debate, which was a specialty of the first sophists, and they received the fame and fortune they were seeking.
So Sophists were people who were really good at speaking, and could convince an audience of whatever they wanted, and used it to collect fame and fortune.
Does this sound like anybody we’ve just been talking about? I would say that Rogan and RFKj are modern day Sophists: good at capturing an audience and using it for personal gain, truth be damned.
Because they were largely spouting garbage, most of the thoughts of the Sophists have been lost to time, though we know of many of their arguments through the writings of their opponents. Many of Plato’s works are descriptions of arguments between Socrates and various Sophists, where Socrates would turn their wordplay against them and basically fight them to a state of “aporia,” or uncertainty. For example, if a Sophist claimed to understand the true nature of love, Socrates would meticulously pick apart their specious arguments until he reached a point where he could say, in essence, “It’s clear that neither of us knows what love is.”
Aristotle went even further and compiled a text of “Sophistical Refutations” to provide a reference for dismantling nonsense arguments. The list of refutations is still relevant and worth reading to this day, some 2000 years later.
The Sophists highlight the problem with public debates: they are easily gamed with lies, rhetorical skill, and clever wordplay. In order for a debate to actually be worthwhile, both participants must be sincerely dedicated to finding the truth; if one side is not committed to the truth, they will have an advantage, because it is much easier to spout falsehoods than it is to refute them. The technique of spouting too many nonsense points to refute has its own name, called the Gish Gallop, after a young earth creationist who used the technique to criticize evolutionary theory.
The Gish Gallop is effective in live debates largely because the audience does not have enough specialized knowledge to ascertain the validity of a criticism. Science is hard, complicated, and nuanced; when a dishonest debater spouts a dozen nonsensical points, their opponent will not have time to adequately address each of these points. This can give an audience the impression, based simply on the volume of arguments on each side, that the dishonest debater has won the argument.
A live debate is also extremely limited because the participants do not have time to do research to respond to an opponent’s comment. Even experts in a field usually do not have all the relevant data for their field in their head to be recalled at a moment’s notice; again, the Gish Galloper has the advantage here, in that they are usually just providing a list of attacks and are not concerned with accuracy.
It is also worth noting that debating is a skill. This is why high schools and colleges have debate clubs: to teach students to more effectively debate in public. A professional debater can “win” a debate with an unskilled debater, regardless of the facts, simply by having a more polished and eloquent presentation. The more I’ve thought about public debates, the more I’ve wondered why we have them at all; certainly we’ve all seen that political debates tend to be almost worthless for determining the quality of a candidate.
Science has been aware of all these issues with public debates for ages, and public scientific debates are a rare thing. But this doesn’t mean that scientists don’t debate the issues — they simply do so in formats that are less susceptible to manipulation and dishonesty.
Scientists go to conferences to present their research results to peers. Presentations are followed up by a short question and answer session where audience members can ask questions and critique the work. This is where scientists get feedback, criticism, and new ideas to explore. The Q&A sessions are usually quite short, but if important points are raised during them, researchers will typically meet together to talk at length about the issues. Conference proceedings are typically published that at least give an overview of the work presented, so that people who couldn’t attend the conference can stay informed.
One noteworthy point about conferences that is very different from public debates: it is okay to say “I don’t know.” I impress this upon my students that it is acceptable to not have an answer to every question an audience member might ask. The whole purpose of a scientific conference is to learn more from your colleagues, so if someone raises a point that you haven’t thought of, it’s perfectly fine to admit that. (Though it can be quite embarrassing if someone asks you a really obvious question that you should have thought of.)
Personal correspondence is another way that researchers discuss results. In the old days, scientists would write to each other or telephone to talk about science; these days, we often send emails to each other to discuss technical points. Historically, there have been many great insights discovered through such communications; many of Albert Einstein’s most famous sayings appeared in letters he wrote to colleagues.
The most visible method for communicating and debating science is publishing in scientific journals. Papers submitted to reputable journals go through a peer-review process in which 2-4 scientists are asked to review the work and determine if it is publishable, and ask for changes to things that are deemed unsatisfactory. Usually about a month is allowed to make the changes, so that the authors have time to consider the change, study the question, and make appropriate revisions.
Even publication of a paper does not end the process, however. Researchers who take issue with a published paper can publish a “comment” on the paper in the same journal, and the original authors can write a “reply to comment.” These discussions can sometimes get pretty heated, as nobody likes having their work criticized in print! If a paper is found to be extremely flawed or fraudulent, a journal can officially retract it. Highly related to this discussion is the retraction of the original and dishonest “vaccines cause autism” paper that appeared in 1998.
These events are not usually public facing, and for good reason. Science is hard, and very technical, and it can be very challenging to communicate science to a non-technical audience. An entire career path of science communication has evolved because knowing how to explain things to the public is a full-time job (and a big reason why I write this blog). Relatively few scientists have the training to do this themselves, and those that do are usually not doing it full-time. But most scientists try their best to explain what they’re doing, and why.
All of this is to say: scientists have long-established ways of sorting out good science from bad science, and public debates are not one of them. Public debates are easily gamed by bad actors who have made a living off of gaming such forums. They know how to deceive their audience, and the deck is stacked against any scientist who makes a good faith effort to appear. Just by appearing on a show like Rogan’s for a “debate” gives the show credibility that it doesn’t deserve. Debating a crank like RFKj gives him credibility that he doesn’t deserve. For example, look at this video clip of him on Twitter talking about Wifi:
Here’s the text of the conversation:
RFK Jr.: Wifi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.
Rogan: How does wifi open up your blood-brain barrier?
RFK Jr.: Now you’ve gone beyond my expertise.
To see how absurd this is, here’s my own version:
Me: invisible garden gnomes on stationary bikes make the sun shine
Rogan: how do invisible garden gnomes on stationary bikes make the sun shine?
Me: now you’ve gone beyond my expertise
RFKj is basically admitting here that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about: he’s simply parroting a line he heard from somewhere without seeking to understand whether it is true. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that he is served well by parroting it.
Does this mean that a non-scientist should simply believe everything a scientist says without question? Of course not. But before you decide a scientist is wrong, you must put in a significant amount of time and effort to learn what they are talking about and — this is very important — you should be charitable towards the science. Most scientists are decent, honest people who have worked hard to come to an agreement on what is true. The people who are casting doubt on the science? They have not put in this work, as the RFKj example above shows, and they are very financially motivated to not find the truth. The idea that problems in science and medicine are hard to understand and difficult to solve is much harder to sell than their grand conspiracies.
Science isn’t perfect, and our methods of finding answers isn’t perfect, but we are sincere in our efforts to find those answers. Public debates are generally not a search for answers, but a search for sensationalism.
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Comments disabled for this post because I’m not in the mood to publicly debate this, either.
Skulls in the Stars 