Review: 'Paatal Lok' (2020)
I binge-watched Paatal Lok today, a show on Amazon Prime India about a cynical cop who is all too familiar with how the The System works and who gets a high profile case by chance – to investigate a c…
Nitin Gadkari, tomato chutney and blood
There is a famous comedy scene in Tamil cinema, starring the actors Vadivelu and 'Bonda' Mani. Those who understand Tamil should skip this awkward retelling – intended for non-Tamil speakers,…
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 we…
When cooling down really means slowing down
Consider this post the latest in a loosely defined series about atomic cooling techniques that I've been writing since June 2018. Atoms can't run a temperature, but things made up of atoms, l…
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 cris…
The journalist as expert
I recently turned down some requests for interviews because the topics of discussion in each case indicated that I would be treated as a scientist, not a science journalist (something that happened sh…
In defence of ignorance
Wish I may, wish I might Have this wish, I wish tonight I want that star, I want it now I want it all and I don't care how Metallica, King Nothing I'm a news editor who frequently uses Twitt…
Avoiding 'muddled science' in the newsroom
On April 23, I was part of a webinar called ProtoCall, organised by Pro.to with the support of International Centre for Journalists and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. It happens once a wee…
Time and the pandemic
There is this idea in physics that the fundamental laws of nature apply the same way for processes moving both forwards and backwards in time. So you can't actually measure the passage of time by…
There is more than one thunder
Sunny Kung, a resident in internal medicine at a teaching hospital in the US, has authored a piece in STAT News about her experience dealing with people with COVID-19, and with other people who deal w…
Remembering the 'Game of Life'
The English mathematician John Horton Conway passed away last week, due to COVID-19. He was 82. I'm afraid my memory of him doesn't do him justice because, if nothing else, Conway resented tha…
'Science alone triumphs': A skeptic annotates
An article entitled 'Science alone triumphs: Providing a true picture of the world, only science can help India against coronavirus', penned by a Jayant Sinha, appeared on the Times of India&#…