Professor James Tour, an organic chemist at Rice University, has increasingly faced criticism from the scientific community for promoting personal theories on the origin of life that contradict established research. Once well-regarded for his work on nanotechnology, Tour is now accused of power leveling his chemistry credentials to manufacture controversy rather than advancing truth through proper scientific methodology.
Background on a Professor Out of His Depth
With over 650 research publications and patents, James Tour has made legitimate accomplishments in chemistry. However, as a nanotechnology specialist, Tour lacks direct expertise in prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life – complex multidisciplinary fields studying how the first life emerged through chemical evolution. Despite this gap in background, Tour has become increasingly vocal in critiquing Origins of Life (OOL) research. He dismisses established findings and theories around self-assembling chemical systems while advocating fringe ideas like intelligent design creationism. This has drawn sharp rebukes from experts:
"He’s a great chemist, but he knows nothing about evolutionary biology and nothing about prebiotic chemistry. What he says about evolution makes no sense at all… James Tour is a nobody in this area. He has never published anything in this area, he has no credentials in this area. He passes judgment that he has no reason to pass judgment [on]." – Dr. Arthur Hunt, Origins of Life researcher, University of Kentucky
Rather than grind for truth through conducting rigorous lab research and experiments subject to peer review scrutiny, critics accuse Tour of power leveling for attention. By using his chemistry professor credentials to attack established OOL science well outside his specialization, Tour has boosted his profile on religious blogs and YouTube videos while publishing zero credible papers challenging the OOL research consensus.
Shifting Stances and Basic Errors
Experts detail how Tour frequently strays beyond chemistry into flawed conceptualizations of evolutionary theory, misinterpreting fundamentals any biology undergraduate would know. His dogmatic videos proclaiming life could not have started "spontaneously" betray little familiarly with concepts like emergence and self-organization that cutting-edge OOL research investigates.
However, when specific technical claims by Tour are scrutinized in detail by subject matter experts, he backpedals and contradicts himself while lashing out:
"He makes very definitive statements about things that are just wrong… When shown to be wrong, he just completely changes the subject rather than accepting that he made an error." – Dr. Dave Farmer, Origins of Life PhD chemist
For instance, Tour claimed primordial soup chemistry could not produce complex molecules needed for life. When chemists demonstrated multiple amino acids and nucleotide bases forming spontaneously in early earth simulation reactions, Tour shifted to arguing no function or complexity exists yet. When shown functional RNA enzymes evolved in the lab, proving early life need not be complex, Tour cast doubt on the relevance of such experiments overall.
Such behaviors earn scientific disdain:
"Anytime actual scientists point out errors Tour is making when speaking far outside his actual expertise, he accuses them of misrepresenting his views or not understanding. Yet Tour himself clearly does not understand the latest research nor the evidence underlying theories he constantly rejects."
Manufacturing Controversies Through Provocation
Why engage in such scientifically shallow grandstanding? Critics point to Tour‘s longtime advocacy for fringe views like intelligent design creationism (ID) to explain his antagonism toward OOL research explaining a natural origin of life absent any supernatural creator. His messaging aims less to advance chemistry than to sway religious audiences.
Links with pseudo-scientific ID groups like the Discovery Institute (DI) further undermine Tour‘s credibility. Though the DI uses Tour‘s chemistry credentials to imply mainstream scientific credibility for ID, official position statements actually oppose teaching modern evolutionary biology. Other DI-promoted ideas like irreducible complexity or biological information theory lack scientific validity despite sophisticated-sounding names.
Critics thus accuse Tour of manufacturing controversy to raise his profile, not truth-seeking:
"Tour clearly gets off on being a provocative gadfly… He basks in the YouTube commenters praising his bravery facing down the scientific ‘establishment‘, comparing himself to Copernicus. He‘s chasing acclaim, not advances in human knowledge."
This dynamic has played out before in scientists rejected by peer review who then proclaim persecution. Chemist Peter Duesberg‘s denial of AIDS virus causing AIDS led to similar notoriety within a marginalized subculture.
Further Paths to Irrelevance
Indicating an absence of engagement from serious OOL researchers, Dr. Tour‘s Google Scholar profile shows zero citations or collaborations related to any commentary on evolutionary biology or prebiotic chemistry.
Despite hundreds of videos over a decade making sensational claims like cells cannot be understood through chemistry or Darwin‘s theory is "dead", Tour has published no data, conducted no original experiments, and advanced no detailed hypotheses contradicting established research in leading peer-reviewed science journals.
Credibility indicators such as citation counts or speaking invitations signal Tour being actively ignored by origin of life experts. With no remaining avenues left through proper channels of scientific methodology yet still craving validation, Tour has resorted to stuffing the suggestion box of internet comments sections to proclaim his unrecognized genius persecuted by dogmatic Darwinists.
Unfortunately this likely encourages other aspiring chemists down a similar path of confirmation bias in search of affirmation, directing them away from potential careers advancing human knowledge on the true mystery of life‘s origins.
For someone of Tour‘s prior legitimate accomplishments, his current credibility crisis provokes more pity than outrage. Still, experts suggest that perhaps one day when Tour chooses to come in good faith to actually learn what ongoing research into life‘s chemical origins has revealed, his powers could be better applied to advancing our still incomplete knowledge rather than manufacturing controversies for fleeting YouTube fame.