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…
Analysis
257 posts
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…
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 driz…
Christopher Nolan's explosion
In May, Total Film reported that the production team of Tenet, led by director Christopher Nolan, found that using a second-hand Boeing 747 was better than recreating a scene involving an exploding pl…
The ignoble president and the Nobel Prize
What is the collective noun for a group of Nobel laureates? I'm considering ballast. A ballast of Nobel laureates is appealing because these people, especially if they are all white and male, ofte…
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 a…
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…
The matter of a journal's reputation
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?
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'
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…
Super-spreads exist, but do super-spreaders?
What does the term ‘super-spreader’ mean? According to an article in the MIT Tech Review on June 15, “The word is a generic term for an unusually contagious individual who’s been infected with disease…
Questions we should be asking more often
1. Okay, but where’s the money coming from? In a lecture at the Asian College of Journalism, where I was in the audience as a student, P. Sainath told us that if we needed one rule following which we…