Category Archives: Op-eds
The climate change of bad news
This post flows a bit like the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. As one friend put it, “It starts somewhere and then goes in a different direction.” This year hasn’t been beset by the same old steady drizzle of bad news … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Op-eds
Tagged bad news, Ben Smith, caste, cognitive dissonance, fact-checking, Jacob Silverman, Jonah Lehrer, journalism, Miami Herald, parachute journalism, privileges, Rafia Zakaria, Rukmini Callimachi, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker
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Pandemic: A world-building exercise
First, there was light news of a vaccine against COVID-19 nearing the end of its phase 3 clinical trials with very promising results, accompanied with breezy speculations (often tied to the stock prices of a certain drug-maker) about how it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds
Tagged anti-vaxxer, clinical trials, COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccine, Donald Trump, epidemiological modelling, epidemiology, healthcare privatisation, migrant workers, phase 3 clinical trials, Politically Math, private healthcare
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A sanitised fuel
I debated myself for ten minutes as to whether I should criticise an article that appeared on the DD News website on this blog. The article is flawed in the way many science articles on the internet are, but at … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Op-eds, Science
Tagged carbon dioxide, DD News, Department of Science and Technology, draft EIA 2020, draft environmental impact assessment notification 2020, ecological security, fossil fiels, fugitive emissions, Godavari river, greenhouse warming potential, hydrocarbons, Krishna river, Krishna-Godavari basin, methane, methanol, ONGC
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Why we need *some* borders between us
Borders are often a bad thing because they create separation that is unconducive for what are generally considered to be socially desirable outcomes. And they’re often instituted to maximise political outcomes, especially of the electoral variety. However, as electoral politics … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds
Tagged #MeToo, affirmative action, borders, deliberative democracy, democratic society, higher education, human spaceflight, leaky pipeline, privilege, quota system, reservations, SpaceX, status quo
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The virus and the government
In December 2014, public health researchers and activists gathered at a public forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss how our perception of diseases and their causative pathogens influences our ideas of what we can and can’t do to fight them. … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged COVID-19, epidemiology, Evelynn Hammonds, free press, health journalism, right wing media, science communication, virology
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The WHA coronavirus resolution is not great for science
On May 19, member states of the WHO moved a vote in the World Health Assembly (WHA), asking for an independent investigation into the sources of the novel coronavirus. Their exact demands were spelled out in a draft resolution that … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm, Science
Tagged coronavirus lab origin hypothesis, COVID-19, Donald Trump, evolutionary biology, furin, Harsh Vardhan, Nitin Gadkari, novel coronavirus, principle of correspondence, SARS-CoV-2, sufficient cause, sufficient condition, WHO, World Health Assembly, World Health Organization, zoonotic spillover
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Good journalism is still around
This morning, a trusted scientist called my attention to a tweet thread by Jordan Fischer listing the many good stories journalists in the US had done that had improved the lives of people. The scientist then tagged me, presumably to … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds
Tagged COVID-19, false balance, fourth estate, freedom of the press, Jordan Fischer, journalism
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Poor journalism is making it harder for preprints
There have been quite a few statements by various scientists on Twitter who, in pointing to some preprint paper’s untenable claims, point to the manuscript’s identity as a preprint paper as well. This is not fair, as I’ve argued many times before. … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Ars Technica, COVID-19, journalism, misinformation, peer review, preprint papers, preprint repositories, preprints, press release, science journalism, scientific literature, scientific publishing, The Lancet
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In conversation with Sree Srinivasan
On May 1, I was hosted on a webinar by the American journalist Sree Srinivasan, along with Anna Isaac of The News Minute and Arunabh Saikia of Scroll.in. As part of his daily show on the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Scroll.in, Srinivasan hosts a … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged Anna Isaac, Arunabh Saikia, COVID-19, data journalism, Indian Council of Medical Research, Indian journalism, Irrfan Khan, mainstream media, novel coronavirus, pandemic, Rishi Kapoor, science journalism, Scroll.in, serological tests, Sree Srinivasan, The News Minute
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