The costs of correction
I was slightly disappointed to read a report in the New York Times this morning. Entitled 'Two Huge COVID-19 Studies Are Retracted After Scientists Sound Alarms', it discussed the implications…
Science
363 posts
The life and death of 'Chemical Nova'
You know how people pretend to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize, right? Many years ago, I used to pretend to be the author of a fictitious but, blissfully unmindful of its fictitiousness, award-winning s…
A caveat for peer-review
Now that more researchers are finding more holes in the study in The Lancet, which claimed hydroxychloroquine – far from being a saviour of people with COVID-19 – actually harms them, I wonder where t…
The WHA coronavirus resolution is not great for science
On May 19, member states of the WHO moved a vote in the World Health Assembly (WHA), asking for an independent investigation into the sources of the novel coronavirus. Their exact demands were spelle…
The Wolfram singularity
I got to this article about Stephen Wolfram's most recent attempt to "revolutionise" fundamental physics quite late, and sorry for it because I had no idea Wolfram was the kind of guy wh…
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…
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…
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…
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&#…