Science

363 posts

Science journalism, expertise and common sense

4 min read
Op-eds Scicomm Science ad hominem authoritarianism CDDEP cherry-picking common sense complexity coronavirus COVID-19 epistemology expertise knowledge is power novel coronavirus Ramanan Laxminarayan science journalism Times of India

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…

'Hunters', sci-fi and pseudoscience

3 min read
Culture Scicomm Science Adolf Hitler Bharatiya Janata Party civil aviation Delhi riots Edward Bulwer-Lytton electricity ethnic cleansing Hindutva Hunters identity politics John Forster Nazism occult provincialism pseudoscience sci-fi science fiction technology The Coming Race Vril

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…

A great discussion on the history of India's tech.

9 min read
Analysis Science appropriate technology Arun Mohan Sukumar brain drain CSIR Emergency Five Year Plan history of science history of technology Human Genome Project Indian Institutes of Technology ISRO Jahnavi Phalkey Jawaharlal Nehru Midnights Machines Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya Morarji Desai Nandan Nilekani Planning Commission solar cooker UIDAI Vikram Sarabhai

On February 27, the Bangalore International Centre and Carnegie India hosted a panel discussion around Midnight Machines, the new book by Arun Mohan Sukumar that traces the interplay of technology and…

Dehumanising language during an outbreak

5 min read
Op-eds Scicomm Science Amit Shah Bharatiya Janata Party COVID-19 dehumanisation Eman Ahmed epidemic Harsh Vardhan infection infectious diseases local transmission private healthcare public healthcare system Saifee Hospital SARS-CoV-2 science communication science journalism The Guardian Washington Post Wuhan coronavirus

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

1 min read
Scicomm Science

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…

Freeman Dyson's PhD

3 min read
Op-eds Science Cornell University doctorate Freeman Dyson Institute for Advanced Study Julian Schwinger Nobel Prize PhD privilege quantum electrodynamics Richard Feynman scientific publishing scientific research Vannevar Bush Shin'ichiro Tomonaga

The physicist, thinker and writer Freeman Dyson passed away on February 28, 2020, at the age of 96. I wrote his obituary for The Wire Science; excerpt: The 1965 Nobel Prize for the development of [qu…

Peter Higgs, self-promoter

2 min read
Culture Science C.R. Hagen Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Englert Francois Englert Gerald Guralnik Gerardus t Hooft Greenpeace Higgs Higgs boson Higgs mechanism Large Hadron Collider particle physics Peter Higgs Philip Warren Anderson Robert Brout Sheldon Cooper The Big Bang Theory Tom Kibble Wolf Prize

I was randomly rewatching The Big Bang Theory on Netflix today when I spotted this gem: Okay, maybe less a gem and more a shiny stone, but still. The screenshot, taken from the third episode of the s…