[jacobolus]

Controversial is fine to the extent the controversy shows people struggling toward clearer understanding and better explanations, and as long as all parties are operating in good faith (i.e. not being deliberately misleading).

Let me highly recommend Mehdi Sadaghdar’s (ElectroBOOM) excellent response video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 which does a great job of empirically investigating and theoretically explaining the subtleties involved, in a polite, respectful, and entertaining way.

I have similarly enjoyed the exchange between Sadaghdar and Steve Mould about the physics of the “chain fountain”.

These kinds of friendly scientific “debates” show viewers (e.g. kids) a bit of how the scientific process and scientific discourse works, in a form that is more accessible and digestible than technical journal papers or history books.

Having a discussion back and forth helps to improve both viewers’ specific knowledge and viewers’ processes for comprehending and interrogating new information, so long as the median viewer actually sees some of the responses. (Someone who only ever saw the first Veritasium video probably ends up with a somewhat wrong mental model.)

[kongolongo]

ElectroBOOM's exchange with a retired MIT professor (it was over whether or not KVL always holds) was also very polite, respectful, and entertaining and yet surprisingly the professor who must have received and exchanged feedback before having published many, many times seemed to have a meltdown over a the disagreement.

[canjobear]

Successful professors can get to the point where they’re no longer interacting much with people who disagree with them.

[QuantumG]

Teaching. What a concept.

It warms my heart to see a generation of scientists, engineers and communicators attacking frontiers again.

For a while there it felt like just a few of my friends were fighting for the future and everyone else had written it off to Sci-Fi.