A sanitised fuel

3 min read
Analysis Op-eds Science 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

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 a…

Why scientists should read more

5 min read
Scicomm active voice Casimir effect communication complexity English as second language ESL first language grammar Learning mainstream media meaning making passive voice physics quantum physics reading science communication science journalism scientific knowledge teaching wisdom

The amount of communicative effort to describe the fact of a ball being thrown is vanishingly low. It's as simple as saying, "X threw the ball." It takes a bit more effort to describe ho…

Ayurveda is not a science – but what does that mean?

5 min read
Analysis Science 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

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…

India's missing research papers

2 min read
Science Bharat Biotech Biocon Covaxin COVID-19 COVID-19 epidemic COVID-19 pandemic ELISA test kit favipiravir hydroxychloroquine Indian Council of Medical Research Itolizumab novel coronavirus peer review preprint papers remdesivir science academies science by press release seroprevalence survey Tata Institute of Fundamental Research tocilizumab Zydus Cadila

If you're looking for a quantification (although you shouldn't) of the extent to which science is being conducted by press releases in India at the moment, consider the following list of studi…

The matter of a journal's reputation

5 min read
Analysis Science Biocon Björn Brembs COVID-19 cytokine release syndrome Dinesh Thakur Drug Controller General of India Itolizumab Jammi Nagaraj Rao journal impact factor Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Newslaundry phase II clinical trials phase III clinical trials prestige journals prestigious journals reputed journals Seema Ahuja Sundar Ramanan The Telegraph

Apparently (and surprisingly) The Telegraph didn’t allow Dinesh Thakur to respond to an article by Biocon employee Sundar Ramanan, in which Ramanan deems Thakur’s article about the claims to efficacy…

An Upanishadic lesson for modern science?

6 min read
Analysis Culture Science Amit Chaudhuri Bhagavad Gita causality creation creator disinterestedness Eastern Philosophy genius genius construct Gita Chadha Immanuel Kant impersonality Isa Upanishad Kena Upanishad Lawrence M Krauss modern science New Critical Philosophy of Science power Richard Feynman scientific genius The Life of Science TS Eliot Upanishads Western philosophy

Do the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads lack the "baggage of biography" – to borrow Amit Chaudhuri's words – because we don't know who the authors, outside of the mythology, are or –…

The real story of 'The Old Guard'

4 min read
Analysis Science apoliticism Charlize Theron compassion fatigue Enrico Fermi history of science human experimentation medical experimentation medical imperialism medical research Netflix Paul Feyerabend profiteering rationalism The Old Guard violence

Spoiler alert: Don't read this post if you intend to watch The Old Guard but haven't done so yet. The Old Guard, an action film starring Charlize Theron among others, released on Netflix on J…

The weekly linklist – July 25, 2020

5 min read
Uncategorized augury black holes cyptomining electromagnetic pulses entropy F-commerce Facebook Hope Mars mission India water crisis neutrinos North Kosovo nuclear explosion reading social network Standard Model of particle physics UAE

I've decided to publish this linklist via Substack. Next weekend onwards, it will only be available on https://linklist.substack.com. And this is why the list exists and what kind of articles you…