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…
Scicomm
331 posts
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…
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…
How does a fan work?
Everywhere I turn, all the talk is about the coronavirus, and it's exhausting because I already deal with news of the coronavirus as part of my day-job. It's impossible to catch people having…
Science journalism, expertise and common sense
On March 27, the Johns Hopkins University said an article published on the website of the Centre For Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP), a Washington-based think tank, had used its logo wi…
On India's path to community transmission
There's a virus out there among many, many viruses that's caught the world's attention. This virus came into existence somewhere else, it doesn't matter where, and developed a mutation…
'Hunters', sci-fi and pseudoscience
One of the ways in which pseudoscience is connected to authoritarian governments is through its newfound purpose and duty to supply an alternate intellectual tradition that subsumes science as well as…
Dehumanising language during an outbreak
It appears the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has begun local transmission in India, i.e. infecting more people within the country instead of each new patient having recently travelled to an already affected…
A new beginning
When The Wire was launched on May 11, 2015, we (the editors) decided to organise the site’s content within six principal categories: politics, political economy, foreign affairs, science, culture and…
Mad Mike: Foolish Road
On Sunday, an American thrill-seeker named Mike Hughes died after attempting to launch himself to an altitude of 5,000 feet on a homemade steam-powered rocket. A video of the accident is available bec…
The difficulty of option 'c'
Can any journalist become a science journalist? More specifically, can any journalist become a science journalist without understanding the methods of scientific practice and administration? This is n…