Debate Scientifically vs. Debate Un-scientifically

Scientific:

1. Attack the Facts/Data: one does not get the basic facts right (i.e., your data is unsound!).
2. Attack the assumption: the assumption is not realistic (this is to be consistent with scientific realism), additional assumptions are hidden.
3. Attack the logic: incoherent, inconsistent, conclusions cannot follow from the logic deduction, missed other possible conclusions.
4. Attack the methodological/analytical strategies and/or techniques employed. [This could be devastating(ly) embarrassing…..]
5. Attack conclusions/predictions: conclusions/predictions cannot be sustained or do not bear out, empirically. Hence, the logic and assumption of the thesis (theory) must be questioned (it goes back to the starting point).
6. The harder part: attack the starting philosophical ground on which one’s research has been building. For example, structural functionalism is based on collectivism and harmony, and this is untenable (see Tang 2011, “Foundational Paradigms of Social Sciences” for details).

Unscientific:

1. Simply assert that the other side is wrong or one is right. [i.e., “I am always right, and therefore you are wrong.”, or “What I am saying is a fact that the whole world knows.”]
2. Assume away the question/finessing the question by assumption/push the question back.
3. Dismiss/Evade the question: does not address the questioning by others.
4. Create a straw man: accusing the other with a crime that the other theory did not commit.
5. Accuse others of committing moral errors/crimes because they question one’s logic (this does not mean that we give up moral judgment in scientific debate).

[I quote and develop some of the things said by J. S. Haldane, “Three Theorems of Bad Science”]