What does science in India feel like?
Indian society has inhabited at least three distinct structures of feeling in relation to science since independence — and they are not as continuous as one might expect.
science journalism
Measuring science stories
Google News picks up on science stories that many outlets are covering. Its reasoning is that the more outlets publish a particular story, the more reader interest the story has. However, the flaw here is…
Using AI to fight misinformation
In his latest newsletter, Bruce Schneier springboarded off of articles in Washington Post and The Atlantic to write: There’s a balance between the cost of the thing, and the cost to destroy the thing, and…
Four years
Engineering as a methodology … contains a fundamentally materialist kernel, even if its present incarnation as a bourgeois science drives engineers to think and behave otherwise. — Nick Chavez, Engineers, Materialism, and the Communist Method…
Majorana 1, science journalism, and other things
While I have many issues with how the Nobel Prizes are put together as an institution, the scientific achievements they have revealed have been some of the funnest concepts I’ve discovered in science, including the…
New pages for science from The Hindu
The Hindu has a new print product out called ‘Surf & Dive’ (S&D), whose first edition the editor Suresh Nambath and Shashi Tharoor launched at the group’s ‘Lit for Life’ event in Chennai on January 18.…
New science pages in The Hindu
The Hindu has a new print product out called ‘Surf & Dive’ (S&D), whose first edition the editor Suresh Nambath and MP Shashi Tharoor launched at the group’s ‘Lit for Life’ event in Chennai on January…
The news exists to inform, not to educate
I’d like to highlight a letter published in Science on January 2. I have many points of disagreement with it but I’d also like others to read and reflect on it, especially if they’re (you’re) also going…
Visual science journalism’s DNA problem
Your left hand and right hand are mirror-images of each other. You can’t superimpose them completely even after all manner of rotations and translations. Only mirroring them works. The same thing can happen to some…
PSA about Business Today
If you get your space news from the website businesstoday.in, this post is for you. Business Today has published several articles over the last few weeks about the Starliner saga with misleading headlines and claims…
End of the line
The folks at The Wire have laid The Wire Science to rest, I’ve learnt. The site hasn’t published any (original) articles since February 2 and its last tweet was on February 16, 2024. At the…
The foundation of shit
I’ve been a commissioning editor in Indian science, health, and environment journalism for a little under a decade. I’ve learnt many lessons in this time but one in particular still surprises me. Whenever I receive…