COVID-19 epidemic
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The ‘one billion doses’ hype
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed India’s people 10 times during the country’s COVID-19 epidemic. This is fairly regular but also not frequent – that is, Modi’s addresses are something of special occasions, especially since it’s one of the few ways he interacts with the people at large (he doesn’t like speaking to the independent… Continue reading
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Revisiting ‘The Resistance of the Time’
Let us visit the future – a suitable point of time located in one of the many tomorrows ahead of us, a tomorrow far enough to have left The Time behind. What do we see? We see, among other things, that many people spoke up. Many people did not. Many people who spoke up did… Continue reading
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On The Lancet editorial
On May 8, The Lancet published an editorial criticising the Narendra Modi government’s response to India’s second COVID-19 outbreak, which has been redefining the meaning of ‘snafu’. All hell broke loose. Of course, hell has been breaking loose for quite some time in India now, but the latest episode was in one specific sense also… Continue reading
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A future obscured by exponential growth
A couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I think most of us realised how hard it is to comprehend the phenomenon of exponential growth. Mathematically, it’s trivial – a geometric progression – but more physically, the difference between linear and exponential growth is very non-trivial, as a cause-effect chain where each effect leads to multiple… Continue reading
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India’s missing research papers
If you’re looking for a quantification (although you shouldn’t) of the extent to which science is being conducted by press releases in India at the moment, consider the following list of studies. The papers for none of them have been published – as preprints or ‘post-prints’ – even as the people behind them, including many… Continue reading
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About Me
I’m a science editor and writer in India, interested in high-energy and condensed-matter physics, research misconduct, pseudoscience, science’s relationship with society, epic fantasy, open source/access/knowledge systems, H.R. Giger’s art, Goundamani’s comedy, Factorio, and most things that require a lot of time to get the hang of.