Getting ahead of theory, experiment, ourselves
Science journalist Laura Spinney wrote an article in The Guardian on January 9, 2022, entitled 'Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?'. This excerpt from the article captures its…
Science
363 posts
On science, religion, Brahmins and a book
I'm partway through Renny Thomas's new book, Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment. Its description on the Routledge page reads: This book provides an in-depth ethnographic stu…
On anticipation and the history of science
In mid-2012, shortly after physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe had announced the discovery of a particle that looked a lot like the Higgs boson, there was some clamour in…
A false union in science journalism
At what point does a journalist become a stenographer? Most people would say it's when the journalist stops questioning claims and reprints them uncritically, as if they were simply a machine. So…
About vaccines for children and Covaxin…
I don't understand his penchant for late-night announcements, much less one at 10 pm on Christmas night, but Prime Minister Narendra has just said the government will roll out vaccines for young a…
Charles Lieber case: A high-energy probe of science
There's a phenomenon in high-energy particle physics that I've found instructive as a metaphor to explain some things whose inner character may not be apparent to us but whose true nature is e…
Some thoughts on Robert Downey, Jr.'s science funding idea
On December 12, Iron Man, a.k.a. Robert Downey, Jr., and David Lang coauthored an op-ed in Fast Company that announced a grant-giving initiative of theirs designed to help fund scientists doing work t…
Disappointing persons of the year 2021
I’m starting to think that in this day and age, you will but err when you pick individuals for traditionally ‘prestigious’ awards, prizes, recognitions, etc., probably because the sort of people who c…
The omicron variant and scicomm
Somewhere between the middle of India’s second major COVID-19 outbreak in March-May this year and today, a lot of us appear to have lost sight of a fact that was central to our understanding of COVID-…
The vaccine that was built from scratch
I have no plans to read ICMR chief Balram Bhargava’s new book, Going Viral, about the “inside story” of Covaxin’s making, and am grateful for that reason for Dr Jammi Nagaraj Rao’s quick but seemingly…
Is mathematics real?
I didn't think to think about the realism of mathematics until I got to high school, and encountered quantum mechanics. Mathematics was at first just another subject, before becoming a tool with…
The toxic affair between Covaxin and The Lancet
That Covaxin has been leading a ceaselessly beleaguered life is no mystery – but The Lancet journal may not know that it has been pressed into the questionable service of saving the vaccine's repu…