Poverty, psychology and pseudoscience
From the abstract of 'Why Do People Stay Poor? Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh', November 24, 2020: There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differ…
Good luck with your Maggi
You know when you're cooking a packet of Maggi noodles in a saucepan, and you haven't used enough water or don't move the stuff soon enough from the pan to a plate once it's done cooki…
Ending 2020
My blogging took a hit this year – as did everything for everyone. I couldn't publish nearly as much as I'd have liked. While the average post length was the highest it's ever been – 989 w…
"Enough science."
Edit, 6.04 pm, December 15, 2020: A reader pointed out to me that The Guardian may in fact have been joking, and it has been known to be flippant on occasion. If this is really the case, I pronounce m…
The overlay bias
I'm not very fond of some highly popular pieces of writing (I won't name them because I'm nervous about backlash from authors and/or their supporters) because a part of their popularity is…
Science prizes, wealth location and social signals
One count on which I almost always find myself to be an outlier in India is my opinion that the Nobel Prizes and their derivatives belong in the gutter. But while many people in other countries share…
The thing about π
Consider the following setup, from the game 'Factorio', the game about factory management and automation: There are two factories visible in this image – the two rectangular, green-walled bui…
A Q&A about my job and science journalism
A couple weeks ago, some students from a university in South India got in touch to ask a few questions about my job and about science communication. The correspondence was entirely over email, and I&#…
Tech bloggers and the poverty of style
I created my writing habit by performing it over a decade (and still continuing). When I first started blogging in 2008, I told myself I would write at least 2,000 words a week. By some conspiracy of…
The forgotten first lives of India's fauna
Prof. Biju said the Rohanixalus is the 20th recognised genus of the family Rhacophoridae that comprises 422 known Old World tree frog species found in Asia and Africa. He said there are eight frog spe…
Super-spreading, mobility and crowding
I still see quite a few journalists in India refer to "super-spreaders" vis-à-vis the novel coronavirus – implying that some individuals might be to blame for ‘seeding’ lots of new infection…
On resource constraints and merit
In the face of complaints about how so few women have been awarded this year’s Swarnajayanti Fellowships in India, some scientists pushed back asking which of the male laureates who had been selected…