COVID-19, AMR and India
Maybe it's not a coincidence that India is today the site of the world's largest COVID-19 outbreak and the world's most prominent source of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) pathogens, a.k.a.…
Science
363 posts
Exporting risk
I’m torn between admitting that our cynicism about scientists’ solutions for the pandemic is warranted and the palliative effects of reading this Reuters report about seemingly nothing more than the b…
On the NASEM report on solar geoengineering
A top scientific body in the US has asked the government to fund solar geoengineering research in a bid to help researchers and policymakers know the fullest extent of their options to help the US dea…
Defending philosophy of science
From Carl Bergstrom's Twitter thread about a new book called How Irrationality Created Modern Science, by Michael Strevens: The Iron Rule from the book is, in Bergstrom's retelling, "n…
A tale of vortices, skyrmions, paths and shapes
There are many types of superconductors. Some of them can be explained by an early theory of superconductivity called Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. In these materials, vibrations in the ato…
Reimagining science, redux
This article on Founding Fuel has some great suggestions I thought, but it merits sharing with a couple caveats. First, in narratives about making science "easier to do", commentators give…
Anti-softening science for the state
The group of ministers (GoM) report on "government communication" has recommended that the government promote “soft topics” in the media like “yoga” and “tigers”. We can only speculate what…
Magic bridges
The last two episodes of the second season of House, the TV series starring Hugh Laurie as a misanthropic doctor at a facility in Princeton, have been playing on my mind off and on during the COVID-19…
What the DNA Bill needs
The following article has been published in The Wire, but since it began as a blog post and because I haven't published anything else in a while, I'm using it here as well. The Parliamentary…
Pandemic: Science > politics?
By Mukunth and Madhusudhan Raman Former Union health secretary K. Sujatha Rao had a great piece in The Indian Express on January 14, whose takeaway she summarised in the following line: Science, evi…
Poverty, psychology and pseudoscience
From the abstract of 'Why Do People Stay Poor? Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh', November 24, 2020: There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differ…
"Enough science."
Edit, 6.04 pm, December 15, 2020: A reader pointed out to me that The Guardian may in fact have been joking, and it has been known to be flippant on occasion. If this is really the case, I pronounce m…