Tour-Cronin Debate: Does Charisma Carry the Day?
Yesterday I began a discussion of the Harvard roundtable debate on the origin of life between James Tour and Lee Cronin. Before going further, I should disclose a couple of facts: I consider Jim Tour a friend, and I’m certainly partial to his arguments. But I know that Jim is very passionate. He wears his feelings on his sleeve, and with Jim, what you see is what you get. I don’t think Jim would deny any of this — in fact, I like that about him: he’s a very transparent individual. But sometimes his personality type means that if he feels that he’s on the right side of an important issue, some passion is going to come out. In a world paralyzed by apathy, fuzziness, and fog, I find this refreshing. But his approach brings a rhetorical risk: Jim’s opponents know that our apathetic and fuzzy world fears conflict, so sometimes people try to capitalize on Jim’s passion and misrepresent it as aggression in order to appeal to the “peace, peace…can’t we just have peace?” crowd.
This dynamic was on full display during the Tour-Cronin roundtable. Sometimes Jim’s critics might have a point that he could reach more people if he toned things down a little. But there’s also a time when people need to be awakened to the fact that something is seriously wrong. If Tour is right, then the OOL community has been dramatically overstating their successes to the public, misleading them into thinking that answers are close at hand. If Tour is right then this point needs to be stated clearly, even if some of the offenders’ feathers get ruffled.
So was Tour overly aggressive at the roundtable? Having watched and then re-watched the event, I don’t think that was at all the case. Professor Tour kept his cool, never shouted, never raised his voice to inappropriate levels, and, most importantly, was highly focused on the science. Tour was in fact very mild throughout the event and maintained a very cool disposition.
Cronin’s Charisma Doesn’t Equate to Science
As for Lee Cronin, he has a likeable personality and a cool haircut, and this plays well before an audience of academics — especially those who are allergic to controversy and/or want peace with the establishment. I suspect a lot of Harvard folks fit into that category. Cronin was quick to attempt to address some of the seemingly devastating quotes that Tour had cited from him.
For example, Cronin jovially compared his 2011 prediction that we’d create life in the lab “within the next two years” to other misguided prophecies that we should already have self-driving cars, and affably admitted that his prediction might have been “a little bit too quick.” Cronin directly addressed Tour’s quotation of a tweet where Cronin had called OOL research “a scam.” Cronin clarified what he meant: “I don’t think origin of life is a scam. That was a joke.”
Fine. So Cronin admits he overstated how soon we’d recreate the origin of life, and we’re supposed to take his tweet as a joke. We should give people space and grace to clarify their positions and retract statements that they later realized were inaccurate. But don’t miss the hidden assumption in Cronin’s explanation of his inaccurate prediction: most everyone believes that someday we will have self-driving vehicles. So if predicting that we’ll someday “make life in the lab” is like predicting that someday we’ll “build self-driving cars,” then the two predictions falls into the same category of “reasonable things that will likely someday be accomplished.” The hidden assumptions in Cronin’s argument imply that someday we’ll solve the origin of life.
But remember, Tour offered many reasonable and potent scientific challenges, so we have to ask: Did Cronin adequately address them? The answer is important, and it is this: No, he didn’t. Cronin did not even attempt to address Tour’s challenges. Instead, Cronin adopted a dual rhetorical angle — attack Tour and make the OOL sound reasonable.
Cronin seemed intent upon using the roundtable not to provide a scientific explanation for the origin of life, but rather to convince people to believe that one day we’ll solve this problem. Amazingly, Cronin sought to inspire this confidence without ever coming remotely close to explaining the science of how it is going to happen.
It was quite an impressive and bold rhetorical move. Simply put, Cronin didn’t come to explain how the OOL took place; he just came to convince you to believe that someday that problem can be solved. And Cronin’s good-humored personality certainly made the task much easier for him. But if you look past the charisma, it’s clear that Cronin presented virtually no science that suggests the origin of life is actually a solvable problem.
Jim Tour as Foil
Cronin did not come to talk about the chemistry of how life originated. He came to sound reasonable, and even admitted up front that “I’m not coming here to today to say we’ve solved the problem.” Instead, he hoped that as an OOL theorist appearing in the flesh, he might be able to make the natural chemical origin of life sound reasonable. And he gave it a good try, repeatedly reassuring the audience — without any specifics — that we’re “making progress,” even “fantastic progress.”
But when you want to look like the good guy, it helps to make someone else into the bad guy. That way, you look all the more reasonable and believable. Thus, Cronin forced Tour into the role of foil, the pessimistic, angry, aggressive, and unfair critic. As the self-identified scientific optimist, Cronin sought to make himself look like the reasonable party.
There was a problem, however. When he scripted out his opening statement, he was obviously banking on the plan that Tour would raise his voice, shout, get angry, and act in a generally aggressive and distasteful manner. Thus, in a very odd move, Cronin repeatedly referenced Tour’s “shouting,” or “rattling” people’s “eardrums,” saying Tour would “shout at me until … hoarse” or “shout at [people] relentlessly to say ‘everyone’s an idiot.’” But none of that happened — Tour may have been passionate but didn’t shout, didn’t rattle anyone’s eardrums, and he certainly didn’t call anyone an idiot.
Another example: Cronin claimed that Tour called him a “bad chemist.” But this never happened either. Later during the roundtable Cronin claimed Tour was being “overcritical” — like something you might say to your spouse who keeps nagging you about something. I felt this was entirely unfair: Tour is raising reasonable questions and for this he is accused of being too critical? If so, then surely his challenges should be easy to answer. But Cronin had no answers. Instead, Tour focused on the science, and Cronin focused on Tour. Sound familiar?
Déjà Vu: Repeating the Tour-Farina Debate Dynamic
Lee Cronin is far more pleasant than “Professor Dave,” and this roundtable was far mellower and more civil than the Tour-Farina-debate. Yet key aspects of the rhetorical dynamics were virtually identical:
In the May 2023 OOL debate between Tour and Dave Farina, Tour focused on the science, posing a series of scientific challenges to OOL. Farina explicitly refused to answer those challenges and questions, and instead spent a great deal of time talking about Tour personally — with a vicious series of ad hominem attacks.
In this November 2023 OOL roundtable between Tour and Cronin, Tour focused on the science, posing a series of serious scientific challenges to OOL. Then, his opponent Cronin explicitly refused to answer Tour’s reasonable challenges and questions, and instead spent a great deal of time talking about Tour personally — not getting nasty but nonetheless attacking Tour by repeatedly trying to paint him as “shouting,” “angry,” “aggressive,” etc.
Moreover, the outcome of this “roundtable” is almost identical to that of the Tour-Farina debate:
At the close of the Tour-Farina debate, Tour’s reasonable challenges were left completely unanswered, yet Tour’s character had been unfairly slandered.
At the close Tour-Cronin roundtable, Tour’s reasonable challenges were left completely unanswered, and once again Tour’s character had been unfairly slandered, even if in a friendlier manner.
Lee Cronin is a very personable individual. No doubt about that. But the critic of the origin of life, Jim Tour, had arguments and challenges that his opponent did not address and therefore apparently could not address. Once again, James Tour carried the day. No doubt about that, either.
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