following discussion — the questions and answers, the conversations, the arguments. These were often published either completely or as a synopsis in the printed journals. Sometimes they told some wild stories or argued in language that we would now be astonished to find in a scientific journal. Here is one example, but there are (trust me on this) many, many more.
Sometimes the debates crossed from journal to journal. There is one example I am familiar with, The Gies-Marshall debate over salivary factors. James Marshall had been a student of William Gies. Dr Gies was famous as the founding editor of the Journal of Dental Research (JDR) and the author of the formative work Dental Education in the United States and Canada Bulletin Number Nineteen (The Gies Report) (1926)(equivalent to the Flexner report in medical education). He as a personage of some influence.
Marshall was, I believe, the first to introduce the concept of salivary diagnostics. At the time, Dr. Gies took exception to what he considered sloppy science, and was offended that a student of his would be guilty of the same. Marshall would publish an article in one journal, Gies would publish an article strongly expressing concern in his journal (that became the JDR), Marshall would reply to , etcetera. The discussion was, at some points both heated and wounded, and rather dramatic for a scientific publications.
I am sure there are many similar examples in the early literature of other disciplines. Indeed, there are researchers who explicitly study ways in which scientific discourse has evolved