Category Archives: Analysis
Why not increase ISRO’s budget?
This post is in response to a question on Reddit about why the Indian government won’t increase ISRO’s space budget. There’s a good analogy in India’s research budget. As a share of the GDP, the national expenditure on R&D has … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Department of Space, Indian Space Research Organisation, K VijayRaghavan, public outreach, Reddit, Sundar Sarukkai
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JPL layoff isn’t the fall of a civilisation
A historian of science I follow on Twitter recently retweeted this striking comment: While I don’t particularly care for capitalism, the tweet is fair: the behemoth photolithography machine depicted here required advances in a large variety of fields over many … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis
Tagged Artemis Accords, Gaganyaan, Jeff Nosanov, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mars Sample Return, NASA, NASA Watch
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Poonam Pandey and peer-review
One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey’s “death” and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish “anything”. To be sure, there were broadly two kinds of news reports after the post appeared … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged adversarial journalism, investigative journalism, journals, peer review, Poonam Pandey, publishing, scientific publishing
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Schrödinger’s temple
On January 22, in a ceremony led by Prime Minister and now high-priest Narendra Modi, priests and officials allegedly consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple in Ayodhya, with many celebrities in attendance. (‘Alleged’ because I don’t … Continue reading
An odd paper about India’s gold OA fees
A paper about open-access fees in India published recently in the journal Current Science has repeatedly surfaced in my networks over some problems with it. The paper is entitled ‘Publications in gold open access and article processing charge expenditure: evidence … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Achal Agrawal, APC discount, APC waiver, article processing charge, Current Science, Elsevier, gold OA, Hindawi, MDPI, Moumita Koley, Open Access, Plan S, Springer-Nature
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What Gaganyaan tells us about chat AI, and vice versa
Talk of chat AI* is everywhere, as I’m sure you know. Everyone would like to know where these apps are headed and what their long-term effects are likely to be. But it seems that it’s still too soon to tell … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged chat AI, ChatGPT, crew module, electronic calculator, Gaganyaan, GSLV Mk-III, Hope probe, Indian Space Research Organisation, Lvm 3, S Somanath, Ship of Theseus, space programme, UAE, United Arab Emirates
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A survey of El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption
On December 22, a group of researchers from the US had a paper published in Science in which they reported the results of a survey of 1,800 households in El Salvador over its members’ adoption, or not, of bitcoin as currency. In September … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged Bitcoin, Chiva wallet, cryptocurrency, El Salvador, financial instruments, financial literacy, Nayib Bukele
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Waters and bridges between science journalism and scicomm
On November 24-25, the Science Journalists’ Association of India (SJAI) conducted its inaugural conference at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. I attended it as a delegate. A persistent internal monologue of mine at the event was the … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged National Institute of Immunology, public interest, science communication, science journalism, Science Journalists Association of India, SJAI 2023
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Cognitive ability and voting ‘leave’ on Brexit
In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE on November 22, a pair of researchers from the University of Bath in the UK have reported that “higher cognitive ability” is “linked to higher chance of having voted against Brexit” in the June … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Brexit, cognitive ability, numerical reasoning, Understanding Society survey, University of Bath, verbal fluency, word recall
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