If the majority of the population starts believing in pseudoscience just because we chose to remain silent, and hence the society starts moving backwards, isn’t that is where the motto of practising science loses its meaning?
The Science Congress has moved away from its agenda of inculcating and nurturing scientific temper in society. The space provided by the event has been hijacked by the proponents of pseudo-science. They pretend that modern science already existed in ancient India. This is an injustice both to ancient civilisational knowledge systems as well as to modern science.
In this article on interdisciplinarity, Gautam Menon, theoretical physicist (The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai & Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai) and Sandhya P Koushika, neurobiologist (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai) provide critical insights on tackling interdisciplinary problems, gained from decade of steadfast collaboration.
India experienced a Zika Outbreak thrice in the last two years. Vikram Thakur discusses the virus and what is being done to contain it.
At the moment, we are bowing too deeply at the altar of western science, and thereby turning the pursuit of science into dogma.
Thanks to a collaboration with Carl Malamud and the Public Resource organization, fifty-three books published by the IASc are now available in high-end digital format as an ‘Indian Academy of Sciences Collection’ on the Internet Archive, and more will be added soon. These digitized versions will soon also be available on the IASc website.
The current publication model for scientific papers is riddled with problems. But what can be an alternative? Thomas Guillemaud, Benoit Facon, François Massol and Denis Bourguet describe the pros and cons of the recently started PCI initiative that can potentially avoid some of the pitfalls of the present system.
What is the motivation for a scientist to pursue scientific research? Career? Fame? Doing something useful for the society? Or can there be something beyond?
In the spirit of collaboration, lets work together to improve science communication and journalism. The quality of the product can only improve by co-opting one of the paradigms in science that is worthwhile – the notion of review.
Public list of science communicators of India
