Tag Archives: transparency

On resource constraints and merit

Posted on November 12, 2020 by VM

In the face of complaints about how so few women have been awarded this year’s Swarnajayanti Fellowships in India, some scientists pushed back asking which of the male laureates who had been selected should have been left out instead. This is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Science | Tagged Big Science, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Science and Technology, India-based Neutrino Observatory, ISRO, Jadugoda, jugaad, let teachers teach, NASA, particle physics, R&D funding, resource constraint, Sabine Hossenfelder, Sean Carroll, Superconducting Super Collider, Swarnajayanti Fellowships, transparency, Vannevar Bush | Leave a comment

The scientist as inadvertent loser

Posted on February 6, 2020 by VM

Twice this week, I’d had occasion to write about how science is an immutably human enterprise and therefore some of its loftier ideals are aspirational at best, and about how transparency is one of the chief USPs of preprint repositories … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Science | Tagged Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics journal, citation, citation racket, H-index, impact factor, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Kuo-Chen Chou, Lorenz attractor, peer review, post-publication peer-review, preprint papers, preprint repositories, reviewer coercion, scientific research, transparency, trustlessness | Leave a comment

Another controversy, another round of blaming preprints

Posted on February 1, 2020 by VM

On February 1, Anand Ranganathan, the molecular biologist more popular as a columnist for Swarajya, amplified a new preprint paper from scientists at IIT Delhi that (purportedly) claims the Wuhan coronavirus’s (2019 nCoV’s) DNA appears to contain some genes also … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Scicomm, Science | Tagged 2019 nCoV, Anand Ranganathan, bad journalism, bad science, bioRxiv, hegemony, IIT Delhi, Jonathan Pruitt, post-publication peer-review, preprint server, preprints, scientific journals, The American Naturalist, The Hindu, The Wire Science, transparency, Wuhan coronavirus | Leave a comment

The virtues and vices of reestablishing contact with Vikram

Posted on October 2, 2019 by VM

There was a PTI report yesterday that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still trying to reestablish contact with the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission. The lander had crashed onto the lunar surface on September 7 instead … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm | Tagged Chandrayaan 1, Chandrayaan 2, Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, K Sivan, Pragyan rover, Shillong, transparency, Vikram lander | Comments Off

Alibaba IPO – A vindication of China’s Internet?

Posted on September 23, 2014 by VM

If China wants Alibaba to go international, it will find it tough to take refuge behind its current Internet governance policies. Anuj Srivas explains. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alibaba IPO, China, Google, Great Firewall, Internet censorship, Internet governance, Microsoft, privacy, transparency, Yahoo! | Leave a comment