Category Archives: Op-eds
Trouble at the doorstep
When an alumnus of the IISc wanted to organise an astrology workshop at the institute’s premises in 2017, students and various members of its teaching faculty rose in protest and wrote to the director to have the event cancelled, and … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged astrology, mental health, pseudoscience, selective outrage, Sri Sri, Vedic heritage
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Science and the scientist
Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor won the 2019 Nobel Prize for physics for discovering a famous exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) in 1995. Their claim was first verified by a top astronomer at the time named Geoff Marcy. He was later … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged 51 Pegasi b, Azeen Ghorayshi, Didier Queloz, Geoff Marcy, John B Goodenough, lithium-ion batteries, Michel Mayor, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Nobel Prize for physics, sexual harassment
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Two sides of the road and the gutter next to it
I have a mid-October deadline for an essay so obviously when I started reading up on the topic this morning, I ended up on a different part of the web – where I found this: a piece by a journalist … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds
Tagged bias, Bob Woodward, Donald Trump, ignorance, Jay Rosen, Kary Mullis, Nobel Prizes, objectivity, Omar Kelly, Poynter, Richard Feynman, Surjit Bhalla, Swarajya Mag, The New York Times, victim-blaming, victimisation, view from nowhere, women in STEM
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The virtues and vices of reestablishing contact with Vikram
There was a PTI report yesterday that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still trying to reestablish contact with the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission. The lander had crashed onto the lunar surface on September 7 instead … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged Chandrayaan 1, Chandrayaan 2, Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, K Sivan, Pragyan rover, Shillong, transparency, Vikram lander
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Unseating Feynman, and Fermi
Do physicists whitewash the legacy of Enrico Fermi the same way they do Richard Feynman? Feynman disguised his sexism as pranks and jokes, and writers have spent thousands of pages offering his virtues as a great physicist and teacher as … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Enrico Fermi, feminism, Leo Szilard, nuclear weapons, Richard Feynman, science and society, sexism, Szilard petition
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Authority, authoritarianism and a scicomm paradox
I received a sharp reminder to better distinguish between activists and experts irrespective of how right the activists appear to be with the case of Ustad, that tiger shifted from its original habitat in Ranthambore sanctuary to Sajjangarh Zoo in … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged activism, authoritarianism, authority, expertise, open knowledge, right to information, Sci-Hub, science communication, scientism, Ustad tiger
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The alleged politicisation of science
“Don’t politicise X” has become the defence of choice for a class of scientists and public intellectuals in India whose class and caste privilege utterly blinds them to various inequities in the practice of science – as privilege is wont … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged caste-based discrimination, Chandrayaan 2, gender-based discrimination, ISRO, misogyny, nationalism, Paul Feyerabend, politicisation, politics, privilege, pseudoscience, rationalism, realpolitik, religion, scientism, Tim Hunt
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Chandrayaan 2 and the Left
Since after September 7, when the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed to touchdown on the lunar surface, many writers and thinkers on the political left have been adopting a stance of the mission I find hard to … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Chandrayaan, Chandrayaan 1, Chandrayaan 2, chandrayaan 2 landing, chandrayaan 2 rover, chandrayaan 2 rover name, chandrayaan 2 update, Chandrayaan-2 news, chandrayan, chandrayan 2, chandrayan 2 landing, ISRO, isro chandrayaan 2 moon landing, isro live, isro moon landing, live chandrayaan 2, Vikram Sarabhai
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Scientific fact? Not good enough to be true.
Last week in India: Two scientists who coauthored two papers, along with many others from India as well as abroad, have spoken out against the conclusions of those papers even as they refused to distance themselves from their findings. As … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Aryan migration, Caspian grasslands, Caspian steppes, caste system, European steppe, genomic analysis, haplogroup R1a1a, Harappan civilisation, Indo-Aryan migration, Indus valley civilisation, mitochondrial DNA, Rakhigarhi, Rig Veda, Saraswati river
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The fight over ISRO
My report about ISRO’s ’90-95%’ success claim vis-à-vis Chandrayaan 2 had precisely three kinds of response, split 49%, 49% and 2%. One 49% group went like this: The other 49% went like this: The remainder, which constituted meaningful engagement, was … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds
Tagged Chandrayaan 2, ISRO, jingoism, K Sivan, nationalism, Pragyan rover, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Twitter, Vikram lander
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