The recent debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on evolution and creationism proved to be a popular event, but has sparked a follow-on debate in some areas of the scientific field as to the appropriateness of the use of public debate as a tactic to promote important subjects. Some believe it is necessary to visibly challenge unscientific or dangerous theories, others believe public acknowledgement of these theories gives them a credibility they don’t deserve.
But publicly debating scientific subjects with those who object to them based on a less-than-rational premise is nothing new. It’s been happening throughout history. Evolution is probably the most common subject in fairness; public debates about the theory of evolution are almost as old as the theory itself. But there are still more examples of science v non-science debates if you look for them. Some of the more prominent are as follows.
Joseph Lister v germ theory denialists
The germ theory of disease is widely accepted today, but when it was first suggested that microorganisms are responsible for the spread of sickness, the notion was often ridiculed (and sometimes still is). Many people were understandably alarmed by the notion that invisible creatures were infesting them and making them ill, leading to knee-jerk rejection of the very notion. A similar thing arguably occurs today with regards to climate change. Germ theory also contradicted a number of alternative medicine claims, which stood to lose out through the potential medical advances.
As a result, a public debate was organised between Joseph Lister and the most prominent germ denialists at the time. Lister was instrumental in introducing antiseptic surgery in hospitals, but he wasn’t an experienced debater, so seemed outmatched by the combined voices of 15 denialists in front of an audience of dozens in a public operating theatre. However, the denialists, in a fit of hubris, willingly smeared themselves with drain-water and rancid meat to demonstrate their confidence that germs didn’t exist, and gradually succumbed to violent sickness throughout the debate. The one exception was a particularly vocal pastor (who objected to the term pasteurisation co-opting his title) who cut his finger on a lectern while gesticulating. He refused to let Lister treat it, and eventually died of hospital gangrene.
Pro-fire tribe v Anti-fire tribe
Perhaps the oldest public debate on record occurred around a million years ago and concerned the use of recently discovered fire. Detailed cave paintings reveal that two neighbouring tribes in South Africa were at loggerheads over the use of fire in day to day life. Rather than come to blows, the tribes took the unusually advanced step of publicly debating the merits and concerns of fire (possibly the result of the cooked-food diet of the pro-fire tribe). Given the simplicity of language at the time, the debate seems to have lasted for many days, including such points as “hot thing make food brown, brown food nice”, “hot thing make light, light good in dark” and “hot thing is hot, hot better than cold” on the pro-fire side, and “hot thing new, new not good”, “hot thing not do what told” and “hot thing make skin bubble” on the anti-fire side.
The whole debate was abandoned when the pro-fire tribe used it to cook a wild pig they’d hunted, causing the anti-fire tribe to abandon all protest when confronted with the smell of fried bacon, an irresistible force for most humans.
This one isn’t a debate in the strictest sense, but it is memorable. The discovery of quarks, the subatomic building blocks of atoms, may seem like a given in modern times, but initially many in the physics field were sceptical of their very existence. Several fringe groups staged a public “debate” among themselves with a view to dismissing the whole thing as nonsense. Part of their argument involved pulling atoms apart to demonstrate to everyone there that there was nothing inside.
The venue and everything within a 500 metre radius was vaporised. But in their defence, nobody reported seeing any quarks.
The great sliced bread debate of 1930
Sliced bread was introduced in 1928, and the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread” became common shortly after. However, it was not so universally praised at the time. A number of Christian fundamentalists objected to the general desecration of bread, it being mentioned specifically in the Lord’s prayer but with no mention of it being pre-sliced. A public debate was arranged to discuss the issue in the open. In a surprising twist, the bakers and engineers behind sliced bread capitulated and admitted that it’s not such a good thing after all. This may have been to do with the emotive rhetoric of the fundamentalist opponents, or the fact that they were backed up by the local consortium of breadknife manufacturers and it was considered very unwise to further antagonise a group of angry people who you’ve cost a lot of money who also have access to a lot of jagged bladed instruments.
These are just some of the more infamous public science debates from history. Well, sort of. I mean, I did make them all up, but do they sound any more ridiculous than the real evolution debates we keep having? They could conceivably happen in modern times. Although these days they would probably end up being rap battles. That would be cool.
Dean Burnett often publicly debates himself on Twitter, @garwboy