All Aboard the James Tour Damage Control Train! 

The horse has already been beaten to death, yet every time it's hit, it again somehow screams "God did it". Truly it is a miracle. Good stuff Dave. This is the kind of push back that gives me hope.

He seems to think anyone who talks to him is debating him

I’m a PhD student at Tour’s home university and it makes me feel embarrassed for my school that we even support this guy at all 😅

I have to admire Dr. James Tour's debate tactic when it came to drawing two complex molecules and demanding the Professor Dave take the time to draw a solution to how these molecules formed. The last time I took any Biochemistry courses was well over 50 years ago and if I remember correctly to completely diagram all the steps and include all reagents and required to draw all the steps on a blackboard would have taken well over the time limit that Professor Dave had! Honestly it was cheap and dishonest tactic.

My goodness, Dr Cronin has a superhuman kindness and even patience for nosebleeds like Jim-Jim. Jim-Jim shouts in his face, and Lee calmly says, “I don’t agree, but you do you, bro.” Impressive.

There must come a point where his university realises he's a liability and students are avoiding his department. Once they see they're losing money because Tour is damaging their reputation he won't be there for long.

James Tour is the lolcow I’ll never get tired of laughing at. The man finds unique and different ways to embarrass himself over time. It’s almost innovative.

Damn, Dave, that was brutal. And thoroughly enjoyable, as always. The Harvard video was a real eye opener. People there were extremely kind to Tour, but the overall message was "please, dude, you have to stop doing this, you're embarassing yourself and you may be discouraging people from entering a valid field of scientific research". Near the end, where he goes almost teary-eyed about his imaginary friend, you can almost hear people thinking "damn, this dude is crazy". Watching this video, I see that Lee Cronin is still being too kind to Tour. I get it; after all, any disagreements on scientific matters can be (and eventually are) resolved in the primary literature. But Tour is not simply disagreeing with origin of life researchers; if he was, he would publish his objections and have them peer reviewed. He's moved from trash talking to what essentially can be described as libel. And he won't stop. Unless he's somehow made to stop, he will never stop, because he's a fanatic. Did his buddies at the DI stop after being literally humiliated and exposed at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial? No, they go on stronger than ever, although it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they were conspiring to bring religion into the classroom. Tour won't stop either. And, frankly, I don't see how he could be stopped. Rice isn't doing it, and the scientists he's defaming are too busy doing their job to actively do something. This is why we need people like Dave (and Aron, and so many others). If creationists won't stop peddling their anti-science, at least their anti-science gets to be exposed for what it is. And I can't thank Dave enough for doing this.

"Dave can't read papers." says the chemistry "Ph.D." who can't read an NMR spectrum.

James Tour must be influenced by necromancy if he's able to come back constantly after being slaughtered

I get absolutely giddy whenever a new James Tour response video drops. It’s like X-mas each time!

If Jim is mis-representing a scholar's work to the degree a lawsuit is required, the tenure committee of Rice should be taking action.

It's kind of pathetic that James continues to do this. If I were in his shoes, I would die out of embarrassment.

Will James ever stop, because he doesn’t look like it?

Just want to say, as fun as debunking of James Tour is, Lee Cronin is an absolute legend. His approach (even to people who openly criticise him) is superb and his ability to explain complex topics is incredible. He is even humble enough to admit where the problems are with his work and that he will continue to refine it.

Apologists always, always confuse the falsifiability of theories with a positive argument for their special favorite unprovable sumerian-derived metaphysical-ethical ideology.

I really admited "Dr." Tour's brilliant points he made recently, including the following brilliant, peer-reviewed insights, such as: "AHHHHHHHH MR FARINA!" and who could forget his groundbreaking commentaries, such as: "AHHHH CLUELESS!" I can see why the Discovery "Institute" stakes their reputation on brilliant innovative "scientists" like this man, and Casey Luskin and probably Kent Hovind.

Mr Dave exposed James tour so hard 😂 It is needed though, I am a high school student who didn't know any better and believed James and all of the stuff he said. Saw a vid by proffesor Dave and I see why James gets laughed at.

I'll literally never have enough of James Tour response videos. Been around since before the very first response(s) and I feel just as excited to see them on my feed each time

I really hate how much I enjoy watching people make fun of the stupid that is Tour

Professor Dave - wonderful content. There is one thing I am unsure anyone caught during the roundtable discussion. There was a brief moment when Tour was speaking about Jesus, and he entered a state of religious ecstasy. To me it appeared he became completely unaware of the people seated at the table and his general surroundings as he spoke "my Jesus". He will never lose the astounding ability to say the screeching screeds during your debate with him never happened or calling legitimate fields of study rip-offs/stupid never happened.

Dave listening to Lee: looks like a university student listening to a lecture James listening to Hector: literally Tucker Carlson

A hot-headed chemist named James Tour. He loves to teach, but he loves one thing more: Lyin' Round The World!

Holy sh*t, didn't expect the plagiarism bit. Great work Professor Dave.

Damn, so Tour contacted a random that kinda spoke to Cronin via email that one time years ago just to discredit him. Who is Tour going to bring next? That one guy he owed £5 when they were kids and never paid back?

James is like that person that keeps putting in a hand in the fire even though they get burnt every time. His ego won’t allow him to stop. 🤦‍♂️

MISTER FARINA! ZERO! "I aint screaming ma man"

I would say that this horse has been beaten to death, but since it refuses to stop moving in the wrong direction, apparently it’s neither died nor learned its lesson.

Thia whole James Tour saga has been an absolute treat, never seen such a CLUELESS guy in my life.

46:18 Professor Dave's content is what made me acutely aware of something I had only previously had an inkling of: the 'accuse others of doing the things I actually do' tendency of people like Tour. I don't even know if it's conscious or not, but it really does seem like those who lie can only assume others are doing the same, those who scam can only assume others are scamming too; like they can't imagine other people doing differently than themselves.

It's rather pitiful the Discovery institute can't find a better orator... Dr. Cronin manages to sum up 20-minute segments of Tour's rants in single paragraphs, without even sounding particularly condescending. His humility in this matter makes Dave's savage beatdown all the spicier! Keep up the good work, and thanks for bringing on "your *favorite counselor* on origin of life!" 😁😁

Glad I decided to re-watch the other videos right before you released this one. Zenil should be ashamed that he even associated with James. James shouldn't be working in any university after the stunts he's pulled; That level of plagiarism that seemingly got pushed under the rug is something that would easily get a student thrown out for academic dishonesty. I was under the impression that -even Christian- universities like Rice still had standards to who they let represent them. There needs to be a time when James is forced to become a preacher and not a scientist.

Very few people are willing to fight disinformation on a level like this. Appreciate you, Professor Dave.

You mean to say that James is a hypocrite, a fraud and a liar? 😮 How shocking!

This was absolutely amazing Dave! Im extremely impressed with how articulate this video was and hope it furthers the desire for the general public to want more on Origins of life research!

"Plagiarism, Hype and Fraud", the three words that describe both james and elon

The plaigirism bit at the beginning was so far out of left field that I thought it was just his roght-wing politics showing again (e.g., like during the debate Q and A where he said if you don't like being yelled at, that's a problem with your generation). But then with your treatment of his paper it is just another example that every accusation is a confession.

“Wake up babe, Prof. Dave just dropped another diss track to intellectually draw and quarter Tour”

Ah, a new James Tour breakdown by Professor Dave - just what I needed to get the weekend started off right! Don't let the Discovery Institute off the hook and keep 'em coming!

Just another example of “every accusation is a confession” when dealing with dishonest actors.

Thanks! Ugh. Not even 6 minutes in and I'm already tired of James again. I'll watch it but only in pieces. Thanks, Dave.

It genuinely boggles my mind how many people call themselves Christians, when they clearly haven’t read or internalized the words of Jesus. That inclusion of Matthew 7:5 at the end was truly inspired.

Tour really is the gift that keeps on giving. Every time I think there'd be nothing left to respond to, he decides "You know what? Professor Dave needs more RU-vid views."

10:50 Was kinda just listening to this in the BG but suddenly he starts talking about my specialty topic and you got ALL of my attention. For those curious, Lempel-Ziv and Huffman Coding form the basis of virtually all modern compressed data storage, including the ubiquitous zip files and pngs. The way it works is it looks for sections of data that are identical and assigns it to a table, replacing the data itself with a reference to that table entry. Huffman coding is used to assign the shortest key possible to a given chunk of data, and when decompressing the data, it reads a key, looks it up in the table, and outputs that entry's value, repeating until the whole file has been decompressed back to it's original representation. Love stuff like this.

No matter what comes out, people who think like James Tour will never change their minds. No evidence will ever be enough which is so rich when you think about how many baseless claims the creationists believe in. The mental gymnastics are gold medal material, honestly.

Oh this good timing, pizza is on the way. Rated 5 stars before I've even watched this. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

That Harvard video was so funny. He just looked like a kid who was sitting at the grown up table on Thanksgiving for the first time ever.

I can't believe I'm still not tired of this. I love that others are joining in, especially other academics and even James' colleagues. I don't think I'll get bored of James Tour's antics any time soon, it somehow keeps getting worse.

Thank you, Dave, for giving Andrew Barron a means to expose James' fraudulence. I wonder how long he was waiting to do that, but held back due to academic courtesy or to avoid possibly discrediting an otherwise respectable university for hiring and granting tenure to a dishonest hack.

How Tour can slander others with claims of which he is guilty and not expect this to come back and bite him is beyond belief. Keep up the good work!

Lee Cronin seems like a pretty stand up guy. Definitely the kind of scientist I’d love to sit down and have a coffee with

James Tour is a good example of karma in action, and he is getting treated as he treats others.

The distruction of fraud Tour continues, absolutely brilliant! Thank you Prof. Dave! 💪🏻

James tour should do a toxic gossip train cover

Ouch! Out of all the videos you've done absolutely obliterating James and his malicious agenda... this one presents a whole different level of exposure. I have a feeling he's gonna have a really tough time trying to dig himself out of this one. Incredible work, as always, Dave!

Fascinating discussion. I have to thank James Tour for helping me to learn how far OOL research has advanced. Lee is a really engaging talker, and you can see a great intellect at work.

I love when Dave is humble and admits his ignorance in certain fields. He is educated, but not an expert in this field, and yet he brings in help and still conveys an accurate message. Dave knows his position and mission, and he helps the scientists do their job. Thank you Dave.

"Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, when here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life."

Mister Farina!

Every time I think James has lost all my respect... somehow, he manages to find negative levels.

Hitting Jim with the bible quote at the end was genius 🤣

perfect timing, new video right when i open youtube. this is gold

As a software engineer major, the way creationists try to hijack our terms is dumbfounding to me since dna isnt the same as coding. Coding is all logic and sequential, from what i remember from highschool biology and what I have heard online its far from being the same thing. compression in computer science is about disregarding unnecessary data and the computer can figure out the complete data by comparing the data next to the data disregarded in order to reconstruct the data or use a key that to replace the redundant data. Just because they think that computer science boils down to a combination of binary numbers its the same as combining different sequence (not the same as sequential) of the proteins in a DNA. Which is also stupid since in computer science its binary and DNA isnt binary at all.

Tour -" The reason I looked so out of my league was because i agreed not to speak at the table, so that's why I appeared to know nothing"

Every time I start feeling sorry for Tour, he reminds me why I shouldn’t.

If I ever meet James Tour, I'll have to thank him for giving you so much entertaining content. I'm always up to gawk at the Tour trainwreck.

Thumbnail and video title have me absolutely wetting myself 😂

"Half of it (the paper James had to retract) was plagiarized and the other half was bullshit." -- this is pure gold!

Right on my birthday :D Thanks, Dave! What we see here is the war between science and religion, and Dave is actually doing a massive service to mankind by showing what is going on, that religious zealots *are* an important problem. ...and, actually, even if JT's religious BS doesn't cause him any trouble, getting exposed for actual plagiarism might indeed put a big fat stop to his career. However, in that case, he becomes a martyr and it might actually cause more damage, since, well, his followers probably wouldn't turn away from him, if it turned out that he was performing non-consensual abortions as a hobby. I feel like this kinda comes down to death being the ultimate anti-meme, possibly with the exception of suffering. Atheists are typically largely at peace with the idea o (I would assume so, at least), while christians are not - therefore any challenge to their religion not only directly attacks them via the attachment to the worldview they've invested so much into, but the mere idea of it being false validates their fear of death. The problem is, though, that death is so much of an anti-meme, that it will be lucky that this comment gets public - algos are quite likely to be really sensitive on this stuff, which makes de-anti-meme-ing the concept more difficult. Religion is not a problem, it is a symptom of a collective problem with humankind. Fear of death/being dead is at least a part of that problem. However, with me merely stating that, someone will see something like "we must want to die to solve this", which is absolutely not the message I am trying to communicate, that would likely be their fear talking. I think letting a child have, say, a pet rat or something, would give them a chance to, first of all, learn some responsibilities about keeping a pet, but also once it dies, come in contact with the concept of death in a controlled manner, though, while this may be useful for their development as a person, I suspect that this would merely be an early step in dealing with the concept of one's own death... ...wow, what a direction this comment went in lol

I think one of the most indicative parts of this whole exchange is when, in your debate, James asked about a process and you presented a scientific paper. James then held up a marker and screamed at you to draw it on the board “Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!” To these people, a cartoon holds more explanatory power than a published research paper in an academic journal. These are people who never graduated past the Bill Nye phase of their science education. They can’t read or understand scientific papers, but they love pop science cartoons. They’re laymen who enjoyed science enough to get way in over their heads, and once they stopped understanding what was being said they got angry. They always loved science as a kid and their mom told them they were super smart, so it can’t be that they just aren’t able to understand. No, it must be because everyone else is wrong and lying to them.

Prof Lee Cronin is a total genius. I was fascinated by everything he had to say. I would really like to watch an interview where he explains some of his papers. His use of comp-sci theory in organic chemistry is really cool. Forget about Jim Tour I say!

Lee is so cool. I love how he's essentially just respectfully saying "I don't wish them ill will. I just want them to stop lying about me." I know so little about Computer Science, Chemistry, and Biology but it's really interesting to hear the science and general concepts. James Tour is such a clown. These new insights into his past are really eye-opening. It makes so much sense.

I really cant understand why Rice continues to let this clown humiliate them with his presence

Yeah, they gonna charge you with first degree murder for that one. That was probably the worst burn since Obi-Wan cut off Anakins legs.

Great video Professor Dave! Love your content and I TRULY LOVE these debunks of Tour and his issues. I recently listened to the video you and Lee debunk and break down and I'm so glad you took the time to break all the details down. Really enjoyed the conversation between you and Lee. KEEP UP THE AMAZING WORK!

Really interesting episode having Dr. Kronin on! It's not common for researching professors to get dragged into internet drama, but it gives us the opportunity to hear some unique perspectives.

Luckily, it _does_ make for great content. At first, I was worried; after the fever pitch of the live debate, I thought "surely it can only go downhill from here!" - into one of: milquetoast faux-conciliation; scattered ad-hominem sniping; or complex, technical debate too high-flown to fit well on RU-vid. Boy, was I wrong. After the embarrassing showing at the "debate", #3 was already pretty clearly out, and #1 wasn't looking so likely either... ...but instead of slinking back to the fawning and chittering of his capering servants (simple creatures no match for his twisted glamours) hailing him as conquering hero regardless... Dr. Tour took the bolder route - and flung wide the gates to his treasury of ineptitude! See as he unstintingly proffers the choicest harvests from _decades_ of intensely-cultivated ignorance! It is not often we are thrown such a rich banquet. Mocking laughter again flows freely as water along our parchèd throats, wherein before the foul Doctor's incantation _("PhD, PhD! published! Nature! real chemist!")_ had left only choking dust. ···---······---······---······---······---··· Now, let us join hands in gratitude as we settle in to watch Dr. J.T. tiptoe around with large boxes of ACME® TNT, practice swinging comically-massive mallets, and hold whispered conferences with some sort of deformed coyote. (Maybe this time, it _won't_ blow up in his face! Any takers...? No?) Truly, his work is the fertilizer in which the savage roses of Dave's merciless take-downs can attain to truly monstrous heights. *I love it.*

Just when you think Tour couldn't possibly sink any lower, he somehow manages to drain a little more out of the pool. -Elaine Benes

Me: Me:

Tour has no dignity at all.

Just rewatched the whole series over the past week this is just icing on the cake

James gives me so much second hand embarrassment and I'm pretty immune to that stuff.

Another takedown of Tour is always a pleasure to hear, but the talk with Lee Cronin was fascinating. He really seemed to hit the right level for me when he explained his work.

Pathological would be an understatement in regard to James Tour.

For a science communicator, that haircut really makes me think you're gonna start telling me about the ancient aliens who built the pyramids. Lol, love you Dave!

Dave, it is always such a pleasure to watch you dismantle charlatans. Add onto that a conversation with Lee Cronin and I'm beyond stoked! The two of you together makes for an incredibly interesting and informative video and I truly appreciate the time that you both took to make this. And on the VERY off chance that Lee Cronin has time to read youtube comments... Hi Lee! I think that you are brilliant (obviously) and I would gladly listen to you talk all day. You could read the phone book and I'd be here for it. I'm too old to be fangirling but here I am doing it anyway.

I wish there were more sharp minds willing to be as savage and consistent as Mr Dave Farina. Cheers! 🍻

Oh boy! I am saving this for later when I can watch through uninterrupted. This will be epic.

It wasn't him at the roundtable discussion it was the Babylonians

Even if assembly theory borrowed from information theory, what would be the point. Science builds on other science, that should be obvious. By that logic physicist wouldn't be allowed to use mathematical theorems because plagiarism, that's plainly stupid

I love the difference between Lee and James. James doesn't want you to understand science, because then you'd know how full of crap he is. Lee, on the other hand, is ecstatically giddy talking about science and clearly wants more people to understand his work. ^^

Dave, can you do a video about dinosaurs?

At this point! Taking Tour to court, would be the only way he will stop embarrassing himself! 😂😂😂😂😂

James not being a true scientist… Hearing that exposure at the end was extreme catharsis for me. The moment I saw Mr. Tour and his utterly mad behaviour, which has only gotten worse overtime, I was appalled. But in your very first video, you said that he was “…a respected chemist.” This was anger-inducing for me. This was the accepted level of a respected scientist? How? How could that be even possible!? I never respected him at all, based on what he said. Mr. Tour was basically a slap in the face for the reputation of organic chemistry, and by extension, science in general, at least in my eyes. I am so glad that this video exists.

Dave looks like a younger version of the Ancient Aliens guy, wish I could I see it 😂

No Professor Dave, please! Not another James Tour video my sides cant handle it! 😭😂

I think you oughtta sell "NOT CLUELESS" merch

my takeaway from the round table was this. The physicist on the panel asked Tour how he was going to administer $50 billion of funding as head of the NSF. He said he wasn't responsible for choices but given his track record of manipulation and plagiarism I would keep a firm eye on whether the Discovery Institute and similar organisations receive funding for spurious projects and whether bona fide projects are refused funding.

I have fully accepted that this series will go on untill the end of time, and I will be here watching it till the very end. Thank you for your service Dave, keep crushing this clowns for us.

Man I will never get tired of watching Jimbo get destroyed by science