Life notes
This post is a breakdown of the Pew study titled The Science People See on Social Media, published March 21, 2018. Without further ado… or Is popularity the best way to judge if a Facebook page counts as a page about science? Popularity is an easy measure but it often
Op-eds
Jayant Narlikar, the noted astrophysicist and emeritus professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, recently wrote an op-ed in The Hindu titled 'Science should have the last word'. There's probably a tinge of sanctimoniousness there, echoing the belief many scientists I've
Life notes
How much do we not know about what Indian researchers are doing simply because Western scientists haven't written to some of them?
Life notes
Four doctors affiliated with Kathmandu University (KU) in Nepal are going to be fired because they plagiarised data in two papers. The papers were retracted last year from the Bali Medical Journal, where they had been published. A dean at the university, Dipak Shrestha, told a media outlet that the
Scicomm
Climate change has for long been my go-to example to illustrate how absolute objectivity can sometimes be detrimental to the reliability of a news report. Stating that A said "Climate change is real" and that B replied "No, it isn't" isn't helping
Life notes
This post was republished on The Wire on January 8, 2018. The Finkbeiner test, named for science writer Ann Finkbeiner, was created to check whether a profile of a female scientist published by a mainstream news outlet was produced in the first place because its subject was a woman. It&
Scicomm
I don't know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would "show the way" to curing diseases like cancer. Even the more honest scientific studies that are
Scicomm
I’ve been following the story of the SESAME collaboration in the Middle East since I first heard about it seven years ago, and was really thrilled when its synchrotron achieved first light in November 2017. I wrote about the significance of the occasion for The Wire‘s ‘The Year
Scicomm
You might have seen news channels on the television (if you do at all, in fact) flash a piece of information repeatedly on their screens. News presenters also tend to repeat things they’ve said 10 or 15 minutes before and on-screen visuals join in this marquee exercise. I remember
Scicomm
From an article in Times Now News: Comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday said both have a similar "DNA" and share a passion for scientific research. I'm sure I'm
Scicomm
K. VijayRaghavan, the secretary of India's Department of Biotechnology, has written a good piece in Hindustan Times about how India must shed its "intellectual colonialism" to excel at science and tech – particularly by shedding its obsession with the English language. This, as you might notice, parallels
Scicomm
It's finally happening. As the world turns, as our little lives wear on, gravitational wave detectors quietly eavesdrop on secrets whispered by colliding blackholes and neutron stars in distant reaches of the cosmos, no big deal. It's going to be just another day. On November 15,