Political Crossfire Forums

I’m a freshman student in college and I have a debating question. I follow online debates in order to learn and because it interests me. I may possibly join our debate team, sometime in the future.

My question has to do with when a person offers support for a claim they have made. In a formal debate if person A makes a claim and offers support for their claim by, lets say, citing a paper/study by a scientist. The paper cited does offer support for the claim by person A. Person B, however, doesn’t like a few points in the cited paper and requests person A to support the claims of the author of the study or retract the support. Is person A required to support a scientists claims that was offered for support?

i've never done formal debating but i imagine it would be a colossal waste of their allotted time to bog down their argument playing six degrees of separation with their opponents sources.

If the support offered by person A is from a peer reviewed science paper then it's up to person B to find support if he /she disagree with the points person A made. Person B may have a very valid reason to question the assumptions or methodology, but he/she must argue why.

Person A has no obligation to respond to Person B's complaint unless Person B can appeal to a higher authority than the citation provided by Person A.