Origin of Life: A Layman’s analysis of the Dave Farina v Dr. James Tour Debate, Live at Rice University, May 19, 2023 on the issue of “Are we clueless about the origin of life?”
By David E. Mullis, B.S. (Biology), M.A. (Biblical Studies), J.D. (Lawyer), LL.M (Taxation)
I recently watched the debate between Dave Farina and Dr. James Tour, live at Rice University, May 19, 2023 on the issue of “Are we clueless about the origin of life?” and have the following observations:
General Purpose
It is not my purpose in writing this analysis to answer the question of whether we are clueless about the origin of life, rather it is to analyze the arguments made in terms of presentation and substance.
Issue Presented
The issue presented was “Are we clueless about the origin of life?”
Dr. Tour proposes that no one has successfully synthesized a single polymer in a laboratory necessary as a building block for life from what would be a prebiotic mixture of chemicals functioning in a natural prebiotic manner on earth at the time of the origination of life, let alone create an entire living cell under the same circumstances. He concludes science is still clueless on how life originated on earth or in the universe and will remain clueless for decades to come. He admits that science may one day determine how life originated but for now the “origin of life” researchers are losing ground in making this determination because scientific research continues to discover additional complexities of living cells that further complicates the process. Dr. Tour refers to this as science discoveries keep moving the goal post on origin of life researchers.
Mr. Farina on the other hand disputes Dr. Tour’s contention and contends that much progress has been made in “origin of life” research over the past 70 years and asserts several viable pathways exist for a naturally occurring origin of life by random synthesis and self-replicating (autocatalytic) polymers. Dr. Tour notes that of over 400 Nobel Prizes awarded in recent history none of them were awarded to “origin of life” scientists.
The Debaters
Mr. Dave Farina – According to https://www.edweek.org/technology/professor-dave-explains-how-he-attracted-345-000-youtube-subscribers/2019/03, Mr. Farina has the following resume: “Farina, who taught in high school and undergraduate classrooms for 10 years before turning into a YouTuber, received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Minnesota’s Carleton College and a master’s in chemistry and science education at California State University. His career included a full-time position teaching chemistry, biology, and physics at a private school in Hollywood, and substitute teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, before transitioning to lecturing at a trade university.”
Https://www.edweek.org/technology/professor-dave-explains-how-he-attracted-345-000-youtube-subscribers/2019/03 identifies Mr. Farina as a “science communicator with a goal of explaining science to the world. He received a BA in chemistry from Carleton College in 2005, but is equally fascinated with physics, astronomy, biochemistry, and so many other subjects. His YouTube channel, ‘Professor Dave Explains’, was launched in January of 2015. He also runs the ‘Professor Dave Debates’ Podcast.”
Dr. James Tour – According to https://www.jmtour.com/, “James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering.”
“Tour’s scientific research areas include nanoelectronics, graphene electronics, silicon oxide electronics, carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, graphene photovoltaics, carbon supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, CO2 capture, water splitting to H2 and O2, water purification, carbon nanotube and graphene synthetic modifications, graphene oxide, carbon composites, hydrogen storage on nanoengineered carbon scaffolds, and synthesis of single-molecule nanomachines which includes molecular motors and nanocars. He has also developed strategies for retarding chemical terrorist attacks.”
“Based on the impact of his published work, in 2019 Tour was ranked in the top 0.004% of the 7 million scientists who have published at least 5 papers in their careers. He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2019; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; and recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014.”
“Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009 and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007.”
“He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005 and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005.”
Interestingly, Mr. Farina claims Dr. Tour’s students use his YouTube videos to pass Dr. Tour’s class. I’m not sure why he thinks this is relevant but probably said it as a snarky zinger for debate purposes. The truth in this statement, however, is that Dr. Tour obviously works on a very deep complex level of synthetic organic chemistry and Mr. Farina works on a very simplified level of organic chemistry. I can assure you that Dr. Tour’s most accomplished students do not use Mr. Farina’s YouTube videos to pass their exams and devise their experiments.
The demeanor of the debaters:
Dr. Tour – Aggressive and combative. He said at the outset this was his first debate. Dr. Tour needs to learn to control his adrenaline and avoid attempting to shout down his opponent. There is no need to become combative and aggressive when his arguments are strong enough to carry the day. Although Dr. Tour’s aggressiveness may be a result of passion, it actually detracts from his otherwise strong arguments.
In my opinion, Dr. Tour would have been much more effective by calmly forcing Mr. Farina to discuss his most relevant issues only based upon what he actually knows and not allow him to stand behind other people’s work when he had no working knowledge of the data within his cited articles/studies. Furthermore, Dr. Tour should have challenged Mr. Farina on his assertion that thousands of studies exist by noting that Mr. Farina merely references a few specific studies so one must assume the studies he cited are his best support for his proposition.
Once Dr. Tour showed the data of each of these studies did not support the assertion made by Mr. Farina, Dr. Tour could insist any other studies referenced by Mr. Farina would fail worse than the ones actually cited by Dr. Farina. It is an incredibly weak argument to assert the existence of thousands of unidentified studies to prove a point. It is also weak to draw conclusions from any scientific study without having a full understanding of the data and its implications.
Mr. Farina did much worse. He merely argued his points from the title of articles/studies as if the title was substantive evidence. In other words, Mr. Farina’s arguments were based upon pure hearsay coupled with his bias for wanting origin of life research to be legitimized. Mr. Farina clearly demonstrated in this debate he has no personal firsthand knowledge of the issue presented.
Mr. Farina – Snarky and insulting. He made numerous unsubstantiated claims about origin of life research and declared his claims to be unrefuted. However, when Dr. Tour refuted the data compared to the title of the article/study, Mr. Farina had no ability to respond so he merely dismissed the challenge as being irrelevant without explaining why it is irrelevant.
Most of Mr. Farina’s debate arguments were related to Mr. Farina’s repeated assertion Dr. Tour is a liar and a fraud. Mr. Farina offered as proof of this assertion misspeaks by Dr. Tour that Dr. Tour corrected or clarified. These offers of proof were an attack by Dr. Tour on one of Mr. Farina’s alleged expert witnesses, which Dr. Tour admitted was wrong on one point and apologized to the expert, a confusion over terminology related to auto-chirality, and Dr. Tour’s assertion that there are only about a dozen “origin of life” research groups in existence, which Dr. Tour clarified was limited to synthetic organic chemistry researchers.
On the other hand, Mr. Farina likewise has misspoken in the past, but he did not apply the same standard to himself and call himself a liar and a fraud. Mr. Farina appears to hide his lack of understanding about the issue at hand behind his snarky and unsubstantiated personal attacks against Dr. Tour.
Both were guilty of cutting the other off throughout the debate which appeared to irritate most of the audience.
Presentation of the debaters
Dr. Tour’s Arguments
Dr. Tour contends scientists are clueless about the origin of life. It was quickly apparent that Dr. Tour wanted to discuss the chemistry of prebiotic earth since he contends this hurtle must be cleared before any progress can be made in concluding how life originated on earth or in the universe. Dr. Tour challenged Mr. Farina to show him a single chemical synthetic pathway for the creation of the polymer building blocks necessary to create life. Mr. Farina could not do so and instead declared he did not have to because numerous studies have concluded it can be done.
As stated above, Mr. Farina claimed there were thousands of studies to show this, but he only cited just a few. Dr. Tour refuted this claim by picking apart the problems with the data in the studies Mr. Farina cited. When Dr. Tour asked Mr. Farina to substantiate his claims in the data of the studies he cited, Mr. Farina could not discuss any details and instead repeatedly accused Dr. Tour of being a liar and a fraud. Mr. Farina appeared to base all of his conclusory assertions upon mere titles of studies and articles rather than the data within the studies.
`Dr. Tour challenged Mr. Farina to show the specific data for the creation of life in a prebiotic earth for five criteria needed for a valid hypothesis:
- Polypeptides = proteins and enzymes
- Polynucleotides = RNA
- Polysaccharides = Carbohydrates
- The origin of specified information in the above polymers
- Assembly of the above components into an integrated functional living system, namely a cell. Not a merely randomly mixed system.
Mr. Farina side stepped showing how any of the 5 criteria occurred in a prebiotic earth and declared the issues are settled with years of research stating there are thousands of articles on the subject. Mr. Farina then proceeded to rattle off a few specific articles. However, when Dr. Tour discussed the specific data of the articles and what they actually showed, it was apparent that Mr. Farina could not discuss any details within the articles and supplementary materials and merely repeated what he had contained in his pre-prepared slides.
I say that to say this, Dr. Tour is an accomplished chemist who has spent his life in a laboratory actually conducting chemical experiments and has personal experience concerning how organic molecules act and react. Mr. Farina on the other hand does not appear to have any such experimental experience in the laboratory other than what he may have had in his college studies. Therefore, Mr. Farina is not really qualified to opine as to whether scientists are clueless about the origin of life. Mr. Farina considers himself a science communicator. I consider him a science philosopher rather than a scientist.
What I mean by science philosopher is he reads articles of scientists and draws his opinions of what the articles prove. He does not conduct any experiments himself. There is no problem with being a science philosopher but to do that correctly one has to be able to analyze very complex data and draw rational deductions to be tested from an unbiased point of view in search of the truth. The problem is when science philosophers begin reading biases into the data rather than extracting deductions from the data.
That is where we find Mr. Farina in this debate. His bias is apparent when he attacks Dr. Tour because of Dr. Tour’s religious beliefs and then boldly concludes without presenting any specific proof that we may never know how life originated because there are so many pathways through which it could happen. So, in other words, he cannot show how a single building block can originate in a prebiotic earth environment, let alone how these the blueprint for life gets encoded into RNA or how the polymer building blocks are hooked together and then brought to life. Mr. Farina merely declares boldly that too many pathways exist possibly for anyone to be able to show definitively how life originated. This is a remarkable rationale that defies logic.
Mr. Farina’s Arguments
Mr. Farina refutes that scientists are clueless about origin of life. However, Mr. Farina’s arguments consisted solely of calling Dr. Tour a liar over and over again, and insisting that anyone who agrees with Dr. Tour’s analysis and arguments are idiots who are too ignorant to understand how origin of life works like Mr. Farina does. He then cursed the audience with the F bomb.
Mr. Farina classified anyone who follows Dr. Tour as idiots who have no ability to look at the data, which is the same data Mr. Farina cannot discuss in detail. As stated above, Mr. Farina has no firsthand knowledge of the research behind his assertions concerning origin of life and merely quotes titles and other people. In other words, Mr. Farina’s YouTube channel is designed to take complex scientific issues and simplify them for those who are struggling to understand such issues. Dr. Tour commends Mr. Farina for his attempt to do such and contends his only issue with Mr. Farina is his using the same overly simplified method to debate complex origin of life research data of which Mr. Farina has no command or ability to discuss or debate.
Spiritual Position of the Presenters
The spiritual position of the presenters was as follows:
Dr. Tour stated he is a believer in God and Jesus Christ, but that he never brings God, Jesus or the Bible into his scientific analysis. He contends that someone may someday demonstrate how life originated, and that would not be inconsistent with his religious beliefs. Thus, Dr. Tour contends his religious belief is not involved in his assertion that scientists are clueless about the origin of life.
Mr. Farina presents himself as atheistic (or at least agnostic). He asserts that Dr. Tour is disqualified as a scientist because of his religious belief. Evidently, according to Mr. Farina, you cannot be an accomplished research scientist and have religious beliefs and that only atheistic scientists can be true scientists. The implication is that Mr. Farina is not necessarily studying origin of life in search of truth, rather it appears he is more interested in showing that science refutes the necessity for God, which is a typical modern atheistic assertion. This appears to be the basis of his bias.
Mr. Farina stated there was no evidence of the existence of God. If he was speaking without bias, he should have stated that he does not see sufficient proof of the existence of God and explain why he said that. Instead, he declares no evidence of a creator exists at all. This declaration shows his bias and completely ignores as evidence of a creator, the complexity and fine tuning of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, life on earth and the precise interrelated operation within living cells and organisms including DNA/RNA precision coding which allows a cell to live, function and replicate.
Dr. Tour Contends the “Origin of Life” community is clueless at present as to how life began. Dr. Tour does not contend that scientists will never prove how life originated. He merely contends that the “origin of life” community is still clueless of how life originated and criticizes their overly zealous portrayal of the significance of their studies in their titles, abstracts, summaries and in the media. In other words, Dr. Tour contends the study titles, abstracts, summaries and the media for some reason are hyped to draw conclusions not supported by the data in the studies. In previous statements by Dr. Tour, this hype may be to justify funding for “origin of life” research or it may be an overly zealous biased wishful thinking.
Audience Questions: What can each of you say positive about the other?
When an audience member asked what each could say good about the other, Dr. Tour complimented Mr. Farina in several ways including Mr. Farina’s stated purpose to educate the public on scientific issues. Mr. Farina had nothing positive to say about Dr. Tour and merely continued to call Dr. Tour a liar and a fraud which further demonstrated his bias.
Mr. Farina did not define what makes one a liar and a fraud. In a court of law fraud must be plead with specificity. Mr. Farina clearly uses these terms in a merely conclusory and derogatory manner. On a side note, Mr. Farina engages in ad hominem attacks against Dr. Tour from the beginning of the debate to the end of the question-and-answer period. However, he takes offense from anything that Dr. Tour may have said about Mr. Farina as being ad hominem attacks. That seems very hypocritical especially considering that Dr. Tour appeared to show significant restraint in not attacking Mr. Farina personally.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Dr. Tour clearly had the most substantive arguments that scientists are clueless about the origin of life by showing neither life nor its basic building blocks have ever been created in the laboratory from prebiotic chemicals. However, in my opinion, he weakened the effect of his arguments by appearing angry and aggressive. Mr. Farina on the other hand failed to discuss in any meaningful way how life originated or show a plausible method by which the original polymers were created, hooked together and brought to life.
Mr. Farina insisted that scientists have made significant discoveries that show they are not clueless about the origin of life but made mere conclusory contentions without identifying any specific data to support his positions. He did not appear to be able to discuss any such specific data when confronted by Dr. Tour. Instead, he declared to be backed up by a plethora of unidentified scientific studies. But of the specific ones he cited, he merely argued what the title of the study/article said as if it was the proof of the argument. When confronted on the details of the data in each of those studies/articles, Mr. Farina could not discuss or identify any relevant details.
I certainly cannot state whether studies exists to support Mr. Farina’s contentions, but Mr. Farina did not present any such studies and is certainly not qualified to make the assertions and declarations he makes. The better one to argue Mr. Farina’s positions would be someone who is an actual research scientist. Although some have come forward to critique Dr. Tour, none seem to make the unfounded declarations that Mr. Farina makes.
Mr. Farina resorted repeatedly to ad hominem attacks against Dr. Tour calling him a liar and a fraud. As the sayings go, if you have no answer to an argument attack the messenger. That is how Mr. Farina flows. Likewise, if you have the law argue the law. If you have the facts, argue the facts. If you have neither, attack your opponent personally and just argue. Mr. Farina specialized in unsubstantiated facts and declared his weak hypotheses to be law all while insulting Dr. Tour at every turn. Dr. Tour clearly won the debate.
The audience was not allowed to vote before and after the debate. The audience appeared to be equally split in support of the debaters based upon applause, but there is no immediate way of assessing the audience’s opinions of who won the debate.