[j. d. worthington]

Of course, the worst thing about this sort of idea is that we're dealing with very complex scientific issues -- they cannot be got across in sound bytes, but only in very, very lengthy reports with mounds of data to back them up.

This sort of "debate" is happening in a lot of scientific fields, and presents a completely skewed idea of how science works, how scientists draw conclusions, how complex the issues are, etc. A genuine handling of this, where they brought in their information and debated the findings, would take months (if not longer); so this sort of thing is not only not helpful for finding out the facts, it is actively detrimental to the process....