Tag Archives: social science
What can science education do, and what can it not?
On September 29, 2021, The Third Eye published an interview with Milind Sohoni, a teacher at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas and at IIT Bombay. (Thanks to @labhopping for bringing it into my feed.) I found it … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science
Tagged Anna University, Big Science, class mobility, India-based Neutrino Observatory, Jacques Ellul, Milind Sohoni, science education, social science, spinoff technologies, The Technological Society, The Third Eye
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Ayurveda is not a science – but what does that mean?
This post has benefited immensely with inputs from Om Prasad. Calling something ‘not a science’ has become a pejorative, an insult. You say Ayurveda is not a science and suddenly, its loudest supporters demand to know what the problem is, … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged allopathy, authoritarianism, Ayurveda, bhakts, Bharatiya Janata Party, far right, hospital care, Imre Lakatos, Karl Popper, knowledge systems, modern science, nationalism, Paul Feyerabend, pseudoscience, reason for state, social science, state, Thomas Kuhn, view from nowhere, welfare, welfare state, welfarism
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A science for the non-1%
David Michaels, an epidemiologist and a former US assistant secretary of labour for occupational safety and health under Barack Obama, writes in the Boston Review: [Product defence] operations have on their payrolls—or can bring in on a moment’s notice—toxicologists, epidemiologists, … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged 1%, higher education, humanities, ivory tower, Jeffrey Epstein, manufacturing doubt, political participation, publish or perish, reason for state, scientific knowledge, scientific research, scientism, social science
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Sci-fi past the science
There’s an interesting remark in the introductory portion of this article by Zeynep Tufekci (emphasis added): At its best, though, science fiction is a brilliant vehicle for exploring not the far future or the scientifically implausible but the interactions among science, technology … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Arthur C Clarke, Elon Musk, human condition, human spaceflight, Jeff Bezos, politics, sci-fi, science fiction, social science, Zeynep Tufekci
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Retrospective: The Wire Science in 2019
At the start of 2019, The Wire Science decided to focus more on issues of science and society, and this is reflected in the year-end list of our best stories (in terms of traffic and engagement; listed below). Most of our … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm, Science
Tagged democracy, Dinamalar, history of science, independent journalism, Indian Express, Mongabay, nationalism, Philosophy of Science, R&D, science communication, science journalism, social science, sociology of science, The Hindu, The Print, The Wire
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To understand #NotInMyName
The more vicious public debates we have, the more it will seem like a ‘conversation’ cordoned off to those masses for whom an awareness of social and political issues is only just budding. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged #NotInMyName, Brahmanism, Brahminism, casteism, Huffington Post, lynching, News Minute, protest, Shivam Vij, Sify, social science, upper caste, upper class
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Did Facebook cheat us?
No. There were some good arguments on this topic, swinging between aesthetic rebuttals to logical deconstructions. Here are four I liked: 1. Tal Yarkoni, Director of the Psychoinformatics Lab at University of Texas, Austin, writes on his blog, “… it’s worth keeping in … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged A/B testing, behavioral studies, emotions, Facebook, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientific research, social science, Tal Yarkoni
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