Analysis
PTI, celebrating scientists, and class/caste
PTI's decision to stick Anna Menon's name in a headline about the new SpaceX crew makes no sense.
VM
Culture
'Steps in the right direction' are not enough
To laud "steps in the right direction" is to flout an intentional ignorance of the government's track record.
Analysis
Crypto: Climate change means new tech has less time today to prove itself
I spent this weekend reading about permissioned and permissionless blockchain systems. If you want to get in on it, I can’t recommend this post by David Rosenthal enough. Much of the complexity of executing transactions of the major extant cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, arises from the need for
Analysis
The persistence of NFTs
NFTs freak me out. One of the ways in which my grandmother lost touch with her daughter – my mother – was my mother's generation's access to and use of computers, smartphones and the internet. And one of the ways in which my mother and father are out
Analysis
Review of a review: 'Rocket Boys' (2022)
Tanul Thakur has reviewed a series on SonyLIV called Rocket Boys for The Wire. I haven't watched the show and don't plan to, for want of time as well as because, reading Thakur's review, I think I know enough about how the series depicts
Analysis
The new JNU VC’s statement has bad grammar. So?
I strongly disagree with some criticism that has emerged on Twitter against the new JNU vice-chancellor Santishree Pandit. The object of criticism is a statement that Pandit has apparently drafted and in which she states, broadly, what she considers to be her mandate. In response, BJP MP Varun Gandhi wrote:
Scicomm
News coverage in India of open access papers
In a study published in November 2021, Teresa Schultz, of the University of Nevada, Reno, reported that gold, green and hybrid open-access (OA) modes of publishing of scientific papers were correlated with more mentions in the news. Gold OA refers to scientists publishing their paper in an OA journal, and
Analysis
The BJP's fake news (fake?) meeting
Reuters published a very interesting report on February 2, entitled 'Exclusive-In heated meeting, India seeks tougher action from U.S. tech giants on fake news'. Excerpt: Indian officials have held heated discussions with Google, Twitter and Facebook for not proactively removing what they described as fake news on
Analysis
Are preprints reliable?
To quote from a paper published yesterday in PLOS Biology: Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a
Scicomm
Some facts are bigger than numbers – a story
Some facts are just boring, like 1 + 1 = 2. You already knew them before they were presented as such, and now that you do, it's hard to know what to do with them. Some facts are clearly important, even if you don't know how you can
Science
An Indian paper retracted for 'legal reasons'
The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article because it was published in error before the peer review process was completed. The content of this article has been removed for legal reasons. The authors have been offered to submit a revised manuscript for further peer review. All authors agree with this retraction.
Analysis
Why it's important to address plagiarism
Plagiarism is a tricky issue. If it's straightforward to you, ask yourself if you're assuming that the plagiariser (plagiarist?) is fluent in reading and writing, but especially writing, English. The answer's probably 'yes'. This is because for someone entering into an English-using