In my experience "formal debate" (in the vein of forensics competitions, etc) is essentially heavy "research" in which you cherry pick any study or paper or blo

In my experience "formal debate" (in the vein of forensics competitions, etc) is essentially heavy "research" in which you cherry pick any study or paper or blog you can find that supports your position and then spit out all those citiations as quickly as possible in an 8 minute 'speech' -- there's very little debating or discussion going on, just a war of citations which quickly shows all the participants that citations mean nothing -- no matter your view you can find plenty of "evidence" for it, it's an even playing field whether you're affirmative or negative after all. So all in all like the real debate we see on television I suppose.