The two scientists started an adversarial collaboration to test their disagreeing theories.
adversarial collaboration
idiomAny of a class of study designs in which scientists with conflicting theories work together with others who are neutral or agnostic about those theories, and this team runs an experiment to test the theories empirically and thus find out whether one of the theories is contradicted by the evidence found.
To settle their long-standing debate, the researchers entered an adversarial collaboration to design a fair experiment that would test both of their hypotheses.
By engaging in an adversarial collaboration, the opposing research teams sought to resolve their conflicting findings through a rigorous, neutral study that would finally reveal which theory the evidence supported.