The Development Agenda and the Progress of Science and Technology in India

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Institutions such as IISc, IITs or IISERs are some of the most eminent institutions in India and are currently headed by very eminent and distinguished academicians, scientists and able administrators. The conduct of Science and Technology (S&T) in the country is directly and indirectly influenced by the conduct, the methods, the topics of research and the notions of rigour and soundness that these institutions practice[1,2].

 

The shadow under the lamp

Yet all is not well in Indian S&T.  The JEE, GATE and other competitive exams now define the teaching of Science at the school level and the meaning of engineering in this country. However, the students selected by such a process have undergone extensive and expensive coaching and have little interest in working in core sectors with Indian companies or agencies. This has seriously hampered our research and the fulfillment of our mandate. Sadly, we have conducted very little research on these exams, their curricula and their formats, the demographics and their overall impact on society.

 

We also see a dropping quality of PhD applicants, a narrow focus on academic research with little relevance, an over-supply of post-graduates and few openings other than in academics. We also see the newly started IITs and IISERs groping for definition and fighting for the same pool of central funding. The so-called placement problem is acute for these new institutions, esp. the IISERs where there are few pathways for gainful employment for students who do not want to pursue a Ph.D. In fact, the defining feature of Indian elite S&T is the absorption of a small fraction of our graduates into global science or the global economy. The harm done by this is evident across all sectors of the Indian economy [3].

 

Then, there is a great disconnect between the state universities and the centrally funded institutions. This has a serious bearing on our post-graduate programs and on the general employability of the college graduate. Moreover, our inability or unwillingness to find regional institutions as partners has severely limited our ability to undertake research in many key areas, e.g., groundwater or sustainable technologies for small enterprises.

 

The development deficit and its connect with S&T

On the other hand, we also have the development agenda of sadak, bijli, paani, and other material needs of a young and impatient population. We see age-old practices of delivery based on outdated knowledge and a governance which is failing. We also have small, household and rural enterprises, who are our largest employers, struggling in the market place.

 

An important cause is the absence of the above agenda in our curricula, our research agenda and our modes of engagement. We have not recognized these sectors as essentially engineering and scientific services, but which require an inter-disciplinary and field-oriented methodology within a regional context.  We have also failed to formalize these sectors so as to bring out the key processes and problems, ways of measurements, agents and their protocols, in other words, opening them up for analysis and ultimately improving outcomes. If we had done this, perhaps today we would have the necessary empirics to have innovated on new gadgets and processes, and created new job definitions and professions, which bring efficiency and deliver value and actually pay for themselves. Examples of such positions are District Drinking Water Analyst, or District Public Transport Manager, or Cooking Energy Auditor, the City Economist, or even the Scientific Advisor to the District Collector!

 

I must add that engagement with the development agenda has always been part of the research and training within universities in the West. It was only in 1958 that MIT dismantled the Department of Sanitation Engineering. Or see, for example, the Transportation Center at the University of Toronto or the inter-disciplinary Twente Water Center. Today, various top universities are redefining engineering education, e.g., “Engineering+X” at University of Southern California, Development Engineering at UC Berkeley or the Tata Center at MIT. There is a new focus on engagement, i.e., identifying key stakeholders and establishing direct dialogue with them. Even in colonial times, the Thomson Institute (now IIT Rourkee) was to supply knowledge and engagement to what the colonial administration perceived as its development agenda. It is after independence that we have (i) failed to incorporate the study of basic engineering needs of the common people, and (ii) failed to remain engaged with the state’s programs and processes.

 

A Proposal

My proposal is to initiate the formalization of the development agenda and reclaim it as an area of interest for our broader science and technology establishment. It is to assert that these areas are indeed amenable to scientific rigour, soundness and rational argument in broader society.

 

This is to be achieved by our network of centrally funded institutions adopting certain key measures. Perhaps, we can begin with the IITs, IISc and the IISERs. The key steps are:

 

(i) Each department is to identify 2-3 development sectors for deeper engagement and study. For example, Civil Engg. at IIT Bombay may choose Low-Cost Housing, Mechanical Engg. at IIT Mandi may choose pedestrian bridges for the hills and Chemistry at IISER-Pune may choose regional water quality assessment and analysis.

 

(ii) In these areas, the departments will develop expertise through field-work, inter-disciplinary training, student-based projects and case-studies and engagement with local and regional agencies. This will be supported by laboratories and testing facilities, technical and coordination staff and faculty leadership. This should eventually lead to key reports and publications which contribute to better practices in the sector.

 

(iii) Upon maturing, these development sectors should lead to elective courses and course material. These should be extended to regional colleges. This will enable them to participate and contribute into this broader and more effective Science and Technology. [4]

 

(iv) The collection of institutions will together evolve common frameworks for coordination, liaison and accounting, leadership, academic and institutional mechanisms of working in inter-disciplinary areas. They will also evolve a common reporting framework such as a new journal or a dedicated stream in Current Science providing an outlet for both national institutions and regional colleges to report progress.

 

We may also design a common funding scheme, say from DST, faculty incentives and possibly chair positions to give prestige to the program. A more detailed proposal is available herewith [5].

 

And its possible impact

In my opinion, such a program will be widely appreciated both outside and inside higher education, in political, social and intellectual circles and also by our alumni.  It will be seen as a positive step to broaden and deepen science and technology and strengthen our role in it, and also to provide jobs in the form of new professions. It will also be welcomed by regional institutions for they will see a role for themselves and an outlet for their creative energies. The vehicle of case-studies will allow them to engage with their immediate community and train their students in both social comprehension and scientific temper [6]. Finally, if the IIT Council or IISER Council were to make such a proposal to DST, they would most likely welcome it with open arms.

 

Perhaps, this may even go upstream and redefine school-level science as broad enough to incorporate the immediate environment such as bus routes and time-tables, as worthy of study, documentation and analysis. This will cause a deepening of scientific temper which will help our common people negotiate for themselves a better deal in the market and in society. Finally, it will show that Science has a method and outcomes not only limited to passing entrance exams or publishing papers.

 

I think the IISc, IITs and IISERs are well poised for a leadership role in this exciting and challenging mission. Firstly, their own leadership in Indian Science and Engineering will enable the mission to create the institutional space required for others to follow. Moreover, in the form of entities such as CTARA and ASTRA, they have the experience and the intellectual capacity to design this mission and to take it to conclusion.

 

Finally, I must add that the massive dissatisfaction over development outcomes will eventually force us to adopt at least some part of the development agenda. It is better that we do this on our own terms and preserve our autonomy and our notion of rigour.

 

I will end with a quote from the concluding paragraph of the mission statement of The March For Science movement:  https://www.marchforscience.com/mission/  (accessed on 16th July, 2017).

 

“The best way to ensure science will influence policy is to encourage people to appreciate and engage with science. That can only happen through education, communication, and ties of mutual respect between scientists and their communities — the paths of communication must go both ways. There has too long been a divide between the scientific community and the public. We encourage scientists to reach out to their communities, sharing their research and its impact on people’s everyday lives. We encourage them, in turn, to listen to communities and consider their research and future plans from the perspective of the people they serve. We must take science out of the labs and journals and share it with the world.”

 

The world of Science too is groping for ideas and mechanisms to re-engage with the community and re-establish its credentials as a pillar of freedom, prosperity and sustainability. In fact, this is the new frontier that Science must cross. And it would only be befitting that an innovative response should come from the largest democracy of this world.

 

Notes

[1] An older version of this letter was sent on 15th April, 2017 to Prof. Khakhar and Prof. Anurag Kumar as a personal communication. The reply of Prof. Anurag Kumar informing the author on the activities of IISc on the development agenda is gratefully acknowledged.

[2] Some of these arguments have appeared in an Op-ed article in the Indian Express on 5th August, 2017.

[3] The AICTE Review: An opportunity for engineering education reform. Milind Sohoni. In  CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 110, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2016, pp159-156.

[4] This approach has been implemented at CTARA. See for example our course on water and development and the case-studies there. (http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sohoni/TD603)

[5] The Regional Knowledge and Practice.  Milind Sohoni. Manuscript, https://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sohoni/RE.pdf

[6] See Scientific temper and education: a framework for discussion Natarajan Panchapakesan, CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 113, NO. 9, 10 NOVEMBER 2017 pp 1655-56, and also an Op-ed by this author in Indian Express on 22nd December, 2017.

 

Milind Sohoni is a Professor of Computer Science at IIT-Bombay and is also deeply interested in development theories, especially in the areas of education and drinking water.

Update: This piece was slightly edited on 12-Jan-2018 to incorporate the section headings.

What is mitochondria in your mother tongue?

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             Credit: Subhashish Panigrahi. Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Of late, an important issue being discussed within the scientific community happens to be the (sole) use of English as a language of communication, or even thinking. English enjoys the privilege of being the principal bridge language across the world, i.e., it is by default most commonly resorted to, when even two individuals who don’t understand each other’s native language need to converse. In the field of scientific education and research English is the dominant medium across almost the whole world. In terms of written scientific communication as well, most well-known academic journals use English. International conferences are typically conducted in English, Universities across the world, even in the non-Anglophone corners are increasingly offering courses at various levels in English.

 

What then is the problem? Simply, because most of the world’s denizens do not grow up learning English as their first language. They learn their first articulations, their first mythologies, and their first lessons in history in their native languages. When it comes to science though, there is a serious paucity of books and teachers who can communicate the same in native languages. Therefore, to learn their first lessons in science means to first learn to read, write, speak and think in, a new language altogether, something their anglophone counterparts do not need to do. It is not wholly ludicrous to imagine if such a linguistic hurdle (among several others) can be a potential challenge in the lack of the percolation of scientific temper within our society. Such a deficiency in penetrability of science, scientific method and a rational attitude associated with it can only foster the growth of superstition, irrationalism, and illiberal thinking.

 

What is surprising though is that scientific intellectual discourse was not English-exclusive in the past. Writing in Aeon, Princeton historian Michael Gordin talks about how English did not replace just one more dominant European language of choice for scientific argumentation and communication. In fact, the scientist of the 15th to 17th century was a polyglot, discussing and teaching her work within her local society and university confines in her native language, and only communicating with international peers in Latin. Half a century ago, my graduate teachers would tell me that as students in American universities, they were mandated to master either German or Russian as part of their PhD curriculum in order to read the classic papers in chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics, which were written in those languages. In recent times, although it isn’t common to come across papers in Chinese or Russian, the situation has changed considerably. Even in countries where scientific communication used to be common in native languages, the number of papers in English has shot up considerably over the last couple of decades.

 

There are cultural and political reasons why this change has taken place. The isolation of German scientists by their anglophone counterparts begun with their country’s defeat in the first world war. Germanophobia took on greater proportions with the rise of Nazi Germany. After the Second World, the United States pumped in a lot of funding into building its university system and supporting fundamental and applied scientific research; here the medium of communication was naturally in English. As a result, the density of institutions doing world class research and imparting first class education was highest in the United States. Even in western and central Europe, with an influx of international students, English features prominently among the commonly spoken languages on university campuses. Western Europe and the US also host the highest number of scientific meetings and conferences. Most of the prominent academic societies began, and still exist there.

 

Among the rest of the countries, it has been easiest for the commonwealth of nations, which were former colonies of the British empire, to adapt English as the medium of communication in occupational spheres such as in science. In South Asia, being able to communicate fluently in English is not just enabling, it is also a symbol of upward -of-middle class, elitist or exclusionary status. Therefore, it isn’t astonishing to come across individuals who can loquace in English but are at ill at ease (or worse, reluctant) communicating in vernacular languages. Due to their disuse within the sociological milieu of science, vernacular languages have lagged in coming up with an idiom that adequately describes the science of today. Therefore, it is increasingly difficult to even ‘think’ science, except in English. As an example, try coming up with appropriate translations of metaphors like ‘developmental program’, ‘genetic code’ or ‘quantum entanglement’ in any Indian language.

 

Such a phenomenon has been dubbed intellectual colonialism by Prof K Vijay Raghavan, who warns that not being able to think and speak science in indigenous languages will ensure our relegation as followers rather than leaders in our fields. This is primarily because of the huge intellectual investment the student must make in terms of gaining competence in a language that is probabilistically speaking, likely to be unfamiliar to her. In fact, during my time spent on a west coast US campus, several South Asian and Southeast Asian students were spending valuable evenings taking crash courses in spoken and written English in order to become better communicators of their work and compete with their anglophone peers.

 

To drive home the point, the monoglot model of scientific communication is a recent one and more importantly not a ‘default’ one: if anything, it is the emergent outcome of the sociopolitical history of the world. However, are there benefits to getting back to a polyglot regimen of scientific education, communication and thinking? First, the penetrability of scientific education and temper potentially increases manifold. Second, the permission and privilege of scientific discourse in vernacular language will increase the diversity within academia, of students, teachers and researchers in ethnic, class and linguistic terms: such an increase in diversity has always been in keeping with societal progress and egalitarian milieus. Third, the polyglot model allows the scientist to be relatively less vulnerable to the analogies and metaphors that are copiously (ab)used in English scientific communication and can present a distorted imagery of a given scientific ideation. Alternatively, one’s science can be better imagined and represented through a combination of vernacular metaphors/analogies along with those from English. Fourth, the polyglot model of the distant past was destroyed by a hegemonic Anglophone world order. That world orders and the domination by single nations are transient within a grand sweep of civilizational progress is obvious to any keen reader of world history. If in the near future, the fictional country of Syldavia were to be the new hegemon and replace English with Syldavian as the language of international scientific discourse, would the non-Syldaviophone academia subsequently adapt to exclusively communicating in Syldavian from English? Fifth, traditional knowledge systems and protosciences, untested, but accumulated over thousands of years, are written in vernacular languages. Accessing such knowledge systems, benchmarking them and using them in combination with modern technologies (such as the combination of traditional medicine with molecular- and synthetic- biology) requires interacting with chroniclers and practitioners of such traditional knowledges and protosciences. Such knowledge integrations require a mindset that is more consonant with  being able to communicate scientifically with vernacular languages. It takes one glimpse at the inspiring and humbling Nobel lecture of the Chinese phytochemist Youyou To (co-awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for the discovery of the antimalarial artemisinin) to realize the importance of a polyglot approach to scientific communication and exploration.

 

What can be done to remedy this hangover of intellectual colonialism? On an institutional level, there is a need for textbooks and teachers and polemicists, to increase the bandwidth of scientific discourse in vernacular languages. An important role in this direction can be played by digital content platforms that can host popular pieces, scientific debates and insights in multiple languages. A commendable international effort in enhancing the linguistic outreach of scientific education has been taken by the University of Santa Catarina, where scientific content is being translated into languages of ethnic and linguistic minorities in order to provide access to the most vulnerable of social sections. In India, people’s science movements and scientific societies have traditionally taken a lead role in translating English texts into vernacular languages so that scientific temper and rationalism reach the countries’ nooks and crannies.

 

The writer however suggests a certain pragmatist view in the matter and cautions against top-down approaches. In a country like India, identities of individuals are constantly remodeled through migration across regions where different cultures and languages prevail. Let us take a hypothetical case. A student who linguistically affiliates herself with a community that speaks language “A”, moves because of her parents’ transferable jobs to a state where the dominant language for discourse is “B”. Subsequently having grown up, her job takes her to another state where language “C” is spoken. In what language, other than English should she be able to communicate the elegance of the astronomical system, or the intricacies of the cellular organelles, or say the distinction between the elements of the periodic table? The point being made here is that a top-down approach of imposing the necessity of polyglot model of scientific communication is likely to be highly unpopular in a multilingual geography such as ours. On the other hand, if scientists, teachers and communicators take it upon themselves to make an effort in expressing themselves in languages other than just English, the reach of science and its associated values could reach farther and wider than they are at present.

 

A second cautionary note is struck by Prof John Matthew. Writing in Confluence he warns that the practice of science in vernacular languages should ideally take place only after our society looks at scientific practices in an objective way and does not seek to posit any and every bit of scientific marvel as having been already discovered by our forebears in a bygone era. I would argue that such “cultural cannibalism” has taken place despite an English-exclusive scientific-social milieu prevalent in our country. Perhaps if the polemics and argumentations on scientific policy and education were to be carried not just in English but in other languages, the universalist and uniformitarian nature of science would be better conveyed to the impressionable minds, foreclosing the temptations of endlessly pinning down scientific knowledge to specific cultures and geographies.

 

Ramray Bhat is an Assistant Professor at MRDG, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

The Case for English

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A confessedly well-intentioned article in a recent edition of the Hindustan Times  by the present secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, Professor K. VijayRaghavan, advances the proposition that India as a nation will never attain to the highest echelons of science and technology unless it matches its success in sloughing off political and economic colonialism by doing likewise with intellectual colonialism through a single measure – attenuating the centrality of English.  Professor VijayRaghavan is far too intelligent a polemicist to be caught in the appealing trap of the either or. He simply suggests that if the brightest minds cannot be allowed to put forth their best ideas in the linguistic medium in which they function optimally, then they will always be second class citizens when deploying the language of another, one that has been foisted upon them, in this case, English. Instead, the author argues, why not allow for equal weightage of English and the student’s native language such that there can be a ‘free-flowing mix’ between languages. Not for him the cop-out of the alleged monumental difficulty of the task – no, he proclaims, with focus and investment, such a specious contention can be dismissed out of hand.

 

Is Professor VijayRaghavan right, however? Much as one’s impulse would be to agree with him and set about the task of making arcane knowledge available in everyone of the 22 official languages of the country, the gargantuan nature of that undertaking is precisely the fact that there are 22 languages. These, of course, are the result in the main of a political decision taken over 60 years ago dividing states on the basis of dominant tongues set to scripts with various degrees of difference, which in turn trumped the variations accruing to over 700 dialects. That centralisation was attempted in the afterlude of India’s independence has been evinced time and time again by the cack-handed manner in which efforts have been sought to impose Hindi on an often recalcitrant South (we’re all Madrasis anyway, aren’t we)? When Professor VijayRaghavan speaks of Germans thinking in their own language and yet speaking fluent English such that they can work in that free-flowing manner of which he writes in terms both aspirational and wistful, the point to be made is that German dominates the German landscape in a way that Hindi does not India’s. The Germans do not have to think particularly about Pomeranian or Prussian variants, and when was the last time that the French had to contend with having to explain the intricacies of the Higgs-Boson in Provençal Occitan (please note that the only Nobel given in that language was in fact for literature when Frédéric Mistral won it in 1904, rather than for any scientific discovery) or for that matter the Spanish in Euskera for the benefit of the Basques (we shan’t even attend to the comparable matter in Barcelona given the fissure lines making themselves increasingly manifest around Catalonia), or the Finnish giving the time of day in scientific altar-speak to the Lapps? To his credit, Professor VijayRaghavan speaks about the possibilities of the highest expression of scientific literacy in Rajasthan, Kerala and Orissa (a careful selection of the North and West in one move, and then the South and separately, the East) and yet the question is still begged – who will bell the cat? Having studied French off and on for three decades, I am often staggered at how impoverished the language is when it comes to expressing scientific thought in contemporary time. This, despite the fact that German and French were the scientific lingua franca of the 19th century (a fact which rather undercuts Professor VijayRaghavan’s claim regarding Germany – after all, they did have a strong scientific culture in the first place in their language, with English displacing it only latterly), something that was underscored to me when I was compelled, as a requirement for my doctorate in the History of Science, to pass examinations in both. Professor VijayRaghavan, therefore, suffers from the crime of presentism – English dominates now, as Germany and French did two centuries ago, and before them, Latin. It is possible that English itself may be supplanted – perhaps Mandarin will take pride of place in time to come, again, a language that has rather brutally extinguished the possibilities of other local contenders in a scientific sense through Han domination in China. If that happens, all the intellectual dazzle that emerges from a Telangana or a Meghalaya will still have to suffer the indignity of translation, this time into a language with which we as a nation, do not even have facility because we weren’t historically colonised by our north-eastern neighbour.

 

So are we left, willy-nilly, with English, then? I would hazard yes. For a reason that goes far beyond the global dominance of the language itself. It is rather to do with the cultural baggage that appears to attend the use of the vernacular, such as I have witnessed as a teacher in an ostensibly selective central governmental institute. Global examples relating to the dissemination of science have been met with student calls for a preponderance of Indian examples even when there are none to be had. If insularity regarding the nation state is already being countenanced in English, how much more is it likely to happen at the level of the native language? At a moment in time when the role of the mythic appears to hold sway over our collective consciousness, where like in the motion picture ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’, the father proudly claims that every extant invention has emanated from Hellenistic sources, we have, in far more pernicious ways trumpeted likewise across a swath of arenas – aviation to surgery. Hence, while I would dearly wish to hasten to champion Professor VijayRaghavan’s position, ground realities must give me pause. It is only when the context arises for the development of a societal objectivity, which can place scientific, medical and technological development across regions in a manner that evokes curiosity rather than cultural cannibalism, that Professor VijayRaghavan’s hope will stand a fighting chance. Even then, I suspect that the more esoteric terms in science will continue to be in English (if immediately inflected by its US hegemonic variant), used as such in other languages, rather than afforded neologisms in them. This is simply because English isn’t simply an imperial language; it has the concomitant advantage of being able to accommodate the possibilities of that imperium in a manner that none of our state languages can, because they do not enjoy that advantage. They never did, except in some dim distant past, where vestiges of old Tamil can be found in say Bahasa Indonesia. However, I suspect, that this is not the needle in the haystack that Professor VijayRaghavan seeks.

 

John Mathew is an Associate Professor of History of Science at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune.

An associated Confluence article on this topic can be found here.

H.G. Wells vs. George Orwell: Their debate whether science is humanity’s best hope continues today

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File 20171220 5004 1bmzit.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1‘Man Combating Ignorance’ – what’s science’s role? Century of Progress Records, 1927-1952, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, CC BY-NC-ND

 

In the midst of contemporary science’s stunning discoveries and innovations – for example, 2017 alone brought the editing of a human embryo’s genes, the location of an eighth continent under the ocean and the ability to reuse a spacecraft’s rocket boosters – it’s easy to forget that there’s an ongoing debate over science’s capacity to save humankind. Seventy-five years ago, two of the best-known literary figures of the 20th century, H.G. Wells and George Orwell, carried on a lively exchange over this very issue.

Wells, one of the founders of science fiction, was a staunch believer in science’s potential. Orwell, on the other hand, cast a much more skeptical eye on science, pointing to its limitations as a guide to human affairs.

Though Wells and Orwell were debating in the era of Nazism, many of their arguments reverberate today in contemporary debates over science and policy. For example, in 2013, biologist Richard Dawkins justified confidence in science in these terms: “Science works. Planes fly. Cars drive. Computers compute. If you base medicine on science, you cure people. If you base the design of planes on science, they fly. It works….” On the other hand, Nobel laureate Peter Medawar famously argued that there are many important questions that science cannot answer, such as, “What is the purpose of life?” and “To what uses should scientific knowledge be put?”

Confronting challenges such as climate change and feeding the 2 billion people who lack a reliable source of food, it might be natural to regard science as humanity’s only hope. But expecting from science what it cannot deliver is just as hazardous as failing to acknowledge its great potential.

H.G. Wells’ fantastical fiction embodied scientific optimism. Frederick Hollyer

Wells: Full faith in science

Herbert George Wells was born in Kent, England, in 1866. After a childhood accident left him bedridden, he discovered a love of reading. He studied and taught science under biologist Thomas Huxley, eventually receiving a biology degree. To supplement his income, he worked as a freelance journalist, publishing his first book, “The Time Machine,” in 1895.

Today Wells, who died in 1946, is best known as a science fiction writer. Among his most prominent works are “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” “The Invisible Man” and “The War of the Worlds.” In his own day, however, Wells was better known as a public intellectual with progressive political views and high hopes for science.

Wells foresaw many of the landmarks of 20th-century scientific progress, including airplanes, space travel and the atomic bomb. In “The Discovery of the Future,” he lamented “the blinding power of the past upon our minds,” and argued that educators should replace the classics with science, producing leaders who could foretell history as they predict the phases of the moon.

Wells’ enthusiasm for science had political implications. Having contemplated in his novels the self-destruction of mankind, Wells believed that humanity’s best hope lay in the creation of a single world government overseen by scientists and engineers. Human beings, he argued, need to set aside religion and nationalism and put their faith in the power of scientifically trained, rational experts.

Orwell: Skeptical of the utopian impulse

Nearly four decades after Wells, George Orwell was born in 1903 to a British civil servant in India. He grew up in England a sickly child, but loved writing from an early age. Educated at Eton, he lacked the resources to continue his studies and became a policeman in Burma for five years.

After returning to England, he began a prolific career as a journalist. His writings explored such themes as the lives of the working poor and the dark side of colonialism, and he also produced fine literary criticism. It was near the end of his life that Orwell published the two works for which he is best known, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

Today Orwell is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. The word Orwellian has entered the language to describe totalitarian governments that use surveillance, misinformation and propaganda to manipulate popular understanding. Orwell also introduced such terms as doublethink, thought police and big brother.

Orwell operated with less lofty ambitions for mankind than did Wells. In reflecting on the utopian impulse, he wrote in “Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun” that creators of utopias resemble “the man who has a toothache, and therefore thinks that happiness consists in not having a toothache…. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

Science isn’t enough

Orwell was not bashful about criticizing the scientific and political views of his friend Wells. In “What is Science?” he described Wells’ enthusiasm for scientific education as misplaced, in part because it rested on the assumption that the young should be taught more about radioactivity or the stars, rather than how to “think more exactly.”

Orwell also rejected Wells’ notion that scientific training rendered a person’s approach to all subjects more intelligent than someone who lacked it. Such widely held views, Orwell argued, led naturally to the assumption that the world would be a better place, if only “the scientists were in control of it,” a notion he roundly rejected.

Scientific expertise didn’t preclude some scientists from being swept up in Nazi fervor.German Federal Archive, CC BY-SA

Orwell pointed to the fact that the German scientific community had mounted very little resistance to Hitler and produced plenty of gifted men to research synthetic oil, rockets and the atomic bomb. “Without them,” wrote Orwell, “the German war machine could never have been built up.” Even more damning, he argued, many such scientists swallowed the “monstrosity of ‘racial science.’”

Orwell believed that scientific education should not focus on particular disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology – not, in other words, on facts. Instead it should focus on implanting “a rational, skeptical, and experimental habit of mind.” And instead of merely scientifically educating the masses, we should remember that “scientists themselves would benefit by a little education” in the areas of “history or literature or the arts.”

Orwell is even more critical of science’s role in politics. In “Wells, Hitler, and the World State,” Orwell treats calls for a single world government as hopelessly utopian, in large part because “not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing.” Though sensible men have held such views for decades, they have “no power, and no disposition to sacrifice themselves.”

Far from damning nationalism, Orwell praises it to at least this extent: “What has kept England on its feet this past year” but the “atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners?” The energy that actually shapes the world, writes Orwell, springs from emotions that “intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms.”

 

Science’s promise and limitations: the debate continues

The contrast between these two towering figures of 20th-century literature should not be overdrawn. While championing science, Wells recognized that scientific progress could also lead to human misery. He foresaw the development of immense military destructive power in the atomic bomb, as well as the creation of technologies that would undermine privacy.

For his part, Orwell recognized that without scientific research and technological innovation, the British could not maintain parity with Germany’s rapidly developing military. He did not for a second think that his countrymen should revert to the use of shovels and pitchforks as weapons of war, and he called for adult males to own and know how to use a rifle.

The ConversationYet Wells’ and Orwell’s views on science’s potential did in the end contrast sharply. As Wells saw it, scientific habits of mind were precisely what was needed to rationalize the political order of the world. For Orwell, by contrast, purely scientific ways of thinking left human beings vulnerable to deception and manipulation, sowing seeds of totalitarianism. There is much to hope for from science, but a truly reasonable outlook places equal emphasis on science’s limitations.

 

Richard Gunderman, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The ethics of excellence: improving academic research

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Many will agree that academic research in India needs to be internationally competitive and our institutions feature in rankings lists. Global research and competition are now increasingly diverse and in this scenario, India rightfully wants to be an important player. In pedagogy too, we face a situation of enhanced expectations. There has been a rapid expansion with the setting up of more Central and State universities which includes more focussed institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Indian Institutes of Management and National Institutes of Technology, enhancing the opportunities for high-quality teaching. Despite the impressive job being done, there is considerable room for improvement.

Excellence as ethics

But what is still holding our nation back from achieving large-scale global academic excellence which is commensurate with our intellectual heritage and calibre? Beyond blaming the government and the bureaucracy, the usual suspects, it is important to look inward and ask whether our academics display an adequate ethical commitment to excellence.

It is rarely appreciated that excellence is an ethical issue. We think of it as something arising from people of calibre coupled with sufficient resources. But how do successful nations spot such people and resources and enable them to achieve their potential? The answer: there is a sincere and stated commitment to cultivating excellence as a goal. Contrasting this with the academic ethos in India raises uncomfortable questions.

Consider this advertisement put out by Stanford University recently: “We seek exceptional individuals who can develop a world-class program of research, and have a strong commitment to teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.” In such institutions, once an excellent candidate is identified, the institution does everything to convince her/him to accept the offer. Loss of the candidate to a rival institution is considered a serious failure, as excellence is seen to be a precious commodity, with the heads of such institutions held accountable.

In India, in contrast, excellence is at best one of multiple criteria in faculty hiring. Though never openly stated, extraneous considerations abound. It is an open secret that these considerations define a large fraction of hiring across India, and often precede considerations of merit. In some places, excellence can actually go against the candidate.

The faults within

One might be tempted to solely blame failed institutions/departments on the calibre of leadership, and, ultimately, the government that appoints such leaders. But the problem persists even in those institutions led by respected academics. The reasons need to be examined. While academics freely criticise personality cults in the political sphere, they are happy to cultivate those of their own. A few individuals, possibly achievers in their younger days, grow into collectors of awards and fellowships and dominate organisations and committees. Factions grow around them. These people, administratively overburdened out of their own choice, make serious judgments without adequate information. Conflict of interest is another, rarely highlighted, problem. For example, within an institution, the leader may provide partisan support for their own subject of expertise and restrain the progress of rivals.

The problem is not just confined to leaders. In many Indian institutions, there is increasing democratic participation of junior academics in hiring and promotions. One hopes that this would propel excellence to the top of the desirable attributes. Unfortunately even in this set-up, research areas that are of global importance are often, out of sheer ignorance, treated with disdain. This is a key point. In the ethics of excellence, ignorance cannot be an excuse. When making decisions affecting the future of one’s institution, it is an ethical imperative to educate oneself on all the relevant facts.

The atmosphere in which academics work has a profound impact on their achievements. Academic leaders need to offer support and mentorship but also impose a standard of excellence. Instead, too often, they veer to an extreme: either scattering resources indulgently or interfering in every minor matter. In the worst cases, they are vindictive towards those who show signs of exceptional achievement.

Study in contrast

Why do we in India accept extraneous considerations that militate against excellence? Of course our political culture is deeply implicated, which makes it ironic when our politicians ask why Indian scientists do not win Nobel prizes. But a part of the responsibility and the power to change lies within the academic community itself. The problem is our collective failure to articulate the goal of excellence and to exert firm pressure on anyone, however important, who blocks the path. The old tale that Indians instinctively behave like crabs, pulling others down, still has well-deserved traction in academia.

This is not to suggest that even developed countries are free of academic politics or these faults. Rather, there are correctives applied from two directions. One is the rank and file of academia which tends to be more professional than ours. Personality cults are met with a sharp push back and conflicts of interest are openly challenged. Even when disputes take place, excellence does not take a back seat. The other corrective comes from the top; institution leaders are evaluated by their funding and accreditation agencies, and made aware that their future leadership opportunities are diminished by every petty action and slipshod committee work. Ultimately, the system is accountable because it is committed to an ethical standard — the standard of excellence.

 

Sunil Mukhi is Chair of the Physics Programme at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and Chair of the Panel on Scientific Values of the Indian Academy of Science.

This article originally appeared in The Hindu and has been re-posted here with permission of both the author and the paper.

Engaging with Confluence and Studying Vision Documents: A management approach

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Editor’s note: Confluence claims to be “an online platform that aims to bring together all stakeholders of science in the society”. However, what does it mean for all stakeholders to come together? In this piece, a Confluence Reader shares his thoughts on some of the forms that this engagement can take, taking a recently published article as an example.

Source: https://goo.gl/AqHAci. License: CC0 Creative Commons.

 

How I see Confluence

I took ‘Confluence’ to mean coming together, of people with ‘CONcerns’ and those who have ‘inFLUENCE’! Confluence also brings to mind, ‘conversation with fluency’, which seems to be becoming rare, but insisted upon by social scholars to be practiced and promoted as an important facet and part of human endeavors, (McNamee and Gergen1998), especially between people with divergent stands and viewpoints, with a view to converge for a constructive purpose.

It also brings to mind ‘considering all, do as you must’, a Vedic saying, with a bias towards action; and Gandhiji’s saying, “the end of a great life is not accumulation of wealth but contribution.”

So, concern, consideration, contribution, conversation etc. are the aspects that comes to my mind while trying to participate in Confluence.

 

An example: my take on technology vision in India

This is in the context of a recent article in Current Science on vision documents in India, which was highlighted on this forum. I recall my corporate experience in a Public Sector Undertaking on vision building and recall how a Harvard Business Review article (Collins and Porras, 1996) played the role of a starting point. This article is still a classic resource on the subject. Others may bring in their experience and resources, and with these as basis, the Technology Vision 2035 may be studied. Thus, with the technical briefing on the subject, some experience in it and a historical perspective, it appears possible to form an ‘approach’ for studying the vision.

There could be many approaches, certainly as many as the number of participants. For example, Gandhiji’s ‘Swarajya’, treated as the vision of the nation during freedom struggle can be considered a model. The progress made in Technology Assessment in other parts of the world can be another basis, as the authors of the Current Science article have pointed out.

However, in my view, it is also desirable to have a positive attitude towards those in ‘positions of responsibility’. Recalling ‘Thirukural”, “Entrust work to men, only after testing them. But after they have been so appointed, accept their service without distrust. It is wrong to choose men without care and equally wrong to distrust men whom you have chosen.” This is because continuity is one of the requirements for creating a far-reaching vision. As pointed out by Collins and Poras (1996): “The rare ability to balance continuity and change – requiring a continuously practiced discipline – is closely linked to the ability to develop vision. Vision provides guidance about what to preserve and what to change.” (Collins and Porras, 1996).

In this context, it may be remembered that vision building is a management topic. Here, what is important is progress, achievement, movement etc.; not a never-ending contemplation. Rather than watching things happen, it is more interesting to make things happen by starting from where one is and progressing and improving as one moves, embracing enablers and bracing the hurdles. With what we call the ‘process approach’ in management, it would be an interesting endeavor. But what is the process approach?

Like any big organization, the government and the bureaucracy are divided into departments. However excellence at the level of individual departments do not necessarily lead to the best performance at the level of the whole organization. This is due to lack of attention to the interconnections and the interactions, which lie in no man’s land, especially over a period of time. Process Approach recognizes the importance of the interconnections and interactions and helps to systematically manage them, howsoever spatially and temporally distant they may be. That is why, a monitoring scheme, routed in the tenets of a process approach, might be most useful for realizing our technology visions.

Especially with respect to Technology, it may also be vital to know where the world is moving towards, and against that, see our present state and visualize whether the vision would help us to move forward along with others.

If people from each sector review the vision for their sector and come up with their feedback, collectively it would become a review of the vision as a whole, including the governance/management aspects, that the authors have focused upon, agonizingly. Confluence can certainly be a catalyst, however complex the issue is considered as of now. There is time, and time is on our side. Nothing would be insurmountable if people whom we try to treat as ‘other’ is treated as ‘one of us’, such that there is a feeling that ‘we are in it together’.

 

This is how Confluence appears to me as a common man! In all, it appears to involve a good lot of reading, reflection and writing one’s thoughts down for sharing and collaborating in Confluence!

References

Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. (1996). Building your company’s vision. Harvard business review, 74(5), 65.

McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. J. (1999). Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue. Sage.

 

Anbazhagan SV is a science graduate, now retired, with work experience in the area of Industrial Engineering, O&M, HRD and ISO Standard based management systems, in GKW and KIOCL.

Why does our society lack scientific temper and what can scientists do about it?

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Source: Creative Commons CC0Read this article in Hindi

Scientific temper is, the habit of coming to conclusions and making decisions based on evidence, reason and logic and not, having blind beliefs, being superstition and believing in supernatural powers. Why is scientific temper lacking in our society, why are blind faith and superstition so prevalent, and, what can we do about it? I would argue that both scientists and ‘non-scientists’ are to blame. I am soon going to argue that the classification of people into ‘scientists’ and ‘non-scientists’ is absurd and should be done away with, but while I am still using that classification, let me make one more point. As a practicing scientist I would prefer to reflect on the fraction of the blame that lies with scientists and how scientists can help change the situation for the better, rather than lay blame on non-scientists. In this regard I wish to make three points.

 

1. My first point is that we unfortunately project science merely as a body of knowledge. Science is a body of knowledge but in my opinion that is incidental. Science is primarily a set of methods, a tool-kit which we use to generate knowledge. In the method of science we make observations and experiments and use evidence, logic and internal consistency to make decisions. More importantly, we are allowed to question and re-question everything – there is no final authority and no final answer. Science is thus always a work in progress; all answers are tentative and can be called into question at any time and by anybody. This is the method of science but this is not what we are projecting as science. We do not teach the scientific method in our schools. Instead we burden our children with facts after facts, we burden their backs with bags full of books containing facts but we do not tell them how did we come to know all these facts, or indeed any fact. If you ask a high school student who has passed class 10 or indeed ask his or her teacher, I think they will be hard put to define exactly what the scientific method is. This is where the problem begins. And the problem continues even when scientists discuss among themselves; we are mostly busy describing the products of our research and do not sufficiently emphasize the methods by which we obtained those producers. I would argue that the process of science is far more important than the product because the product may be of interest only to a few specialists but the process should be of interest to a much wider group of people. If you ask scientists about what other scientists have discovered they will tell you a great deal but if you ask them how these discoveries were made, they will be able to tell you very little. Taking my own field of research (the study of animal behaviour) as an example, I always have much to learn from the methods of knowledge production employed by geneticists, epidemiologists, psychologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, sociologists, economists, historians and even political scientists, even if I am uninterested in their actual findings.

Whether it is the claim that, there is a 70% chance that it will rain tomorrow, that there is water on Mars, that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, that we have discovered the Higgs Boson or that a little bit of red wine reduces the risk of heart disease, most of us take science’s predictions as articles of faith. Scientists say so therefore it must be true – scientists insist and we acquiesce that we cannot understand the reasoning and logic behind these claims. This equates science with mythology and superstition. Those who take claims from mythology and superstition as articles of faith do not feel that they are any different from those who take the claims of scientists as articles of faith. There is a second equally serious problem. Claims made by scientists when taken on faith do not come with error bars and estimates of risks of failure. We live in an imaginary binary world of truth and falsehood. When it rains as was predicted we praise scientists and when it rains despite prediction to the contrary, we become critical and suspicious of scientists. Some discussion of the scientific method, of the logic and reasoning behind the claims, however rudimentary, will help appreciate the risks involved and the probabilistic nature of the claims. Indeed, I believe it will generate admiration for the scientist and the scientific method, even in the face of failure – consider the complexity and audacity of the task of landing a spacecraft on a moving target (Mars) 54.6 million km away or the equally complex and audacious task of taking a billion numbers and subjecting them to a trillion operations to publish tomorrow’s weather prediction in the newspaper for all to see and pass judgement!

 

2. My second point, which I already alluded to, is that we must do away with the distinction between scientists and non-scientists. I am a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science. I have a Ph.D. in Science. I teach courses in science. I was the President of the Indian National Science Academy. So, by all accounts I am a scientist. But is that always true? Am I a scientist 24/7? Do I use the scientific methods for everything? The answer is a clear No. I do not use the scientific method when I decide what music I would like to listen to, when I decide which restaurant I should go for dinner or what colour shirt I should wear. So-called scientists use the scientific method some times but not always. Similarly, so-called non-scientists also should use the scientific method sometimes though not always. This raises the question of when we should use the scientific method and when we need not? If we want to know whether smoking cigarettes increases the risk of cancer, we must use the scientific method, if we want to decide whether a little bit of red wine actually reduces the risk of heart disease, we must use the scientific method, if we want to decide to learn how to put a space craft on the moon, we need the scientific method and if we have to decide whether or not Indians practiced inter-planetary travel thousands of years ago, we must use the scientific method. It is perfectly alright for me to say I like Hindustani music more than Carnatik music without scientifically justifying it, but it is not alright for me to say that genetically modified (GM) crops are bad for us or indeed to say that GM crops are good for us. In the latter case we need to use the scientific method. All of us should use the scientific method where it is needed, whether we are so-called scientists or so called non-scientists – the distinction between scientists and non-scientists is absurd. Moreover this distinction creates an unnecessary and unhelpful hierarchy in the society. It is meaningless to say that scientists believe that GM crops are good and non-scientists believe that GM crops are bad. Our decision about whether GM crops are good or bad should depend on the evidence and not on belief. It will also be helpful to break down the presumed hierarchy between scientists and non-scientists if we boldly advertise the fact that even professional scientists do not use the scientific method 24/7.

 

3. All this leads me naturally to my third point which is that we must create a situation where everybody can be a scientist when it is necessary to use a scientific method and everybody can afford to be a non-scientist when it is not necessary to use the scientific method. If we want everyone to make evidence-based decisions, we must make it possible for everyone to have access to and be able to understand the evidence. And that is why we must teach science as a set of methods and not merely as a body of facts that scientists have discovered by some kind of magic and happen to believe in. Only then can we create scientific temper in the society and remove blind faith and superstition. Science education should empower a school child who is told that an idol of Lord Ganesha has begun to drink milk, to apply the scientific method – observation, experiment, logic, internal consistency and a questioning and disbelieving attitude – to decide whether what he or she has been told is plausible. Scientists can do a great deal indeed to foster scientific temper in society.

 

This article is based on a presentation made during the Panel Discussion on “Scientific Temper: A Prerequisite for Knowledge-based Society” organized by Rajya Sabha Television (RSTV), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (CSIR-NISCAIR) and Vigyan Prasar, on Sunday, 10th January 2016, in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.

 

Raghavendra Gadagkar is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology and ex-President of Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.

Biological mass extinction far more serious than previously thought?

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– Does the tempest halt for the sake of your blindness?
From the poem Utpakhi (The Ostrich); Dutta, Sudhindranath

Source: Wikimedia Commons

A mass extinction episode is a global phenomenon during which more than seventy-five percent of Earth’s wildlife goes extinct. And, over the last half a billion years, five such mass extinction episodes have decimated Earth’s wildlife. The most recent being the one that wiped out dinosaurs forever. But how many of us are aware that several recent research studies1,2 have time and again claimed that Earth is in the throes of yet another mass extinction episode: the sixth mass extinction.

Indeed, over the last 100 years, 200 species of vertebrates have gone extinct3. This extinction rate, of two species a year, may only elicit a shrug of your shoulders and may not sound alarming: Animals go extinct all the time, such is the way of nature. But when one considers the rate at which animals usually went extinct in the last two million years, two hundred species would not have taken a hundred years but ten thousand years to go extinct.

The extinction rate, in other words, has risen drastically – by almost 100 times – as compared with the eras before and in too short a window of time, the last one hundred years.

A research article3, published recently in the journal PNAS [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences], however, goes one step further with its claims regarding the sixth mass extinction.

This study reports that not only is the unsheathing of the sixth mass extinction a contemporary phenomenon, but it is also a lot more severe in magnitude than previously thought. Furthermore, this study also alludes to the fact the human animal seems to be solely responsible for this one. It is interesting to note that even the first mass extinction, which occurred much, much before the first human being came into existence, was caused not by a shower of meteors or by great volcanic eruptions but by animals8.

“In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species,”3 write the authors – Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Rodolfo Dirzo – in their research article. Furthermore, according to the study, in the last hundred years, “50% of the number of vertebrate individuals that once shared Earth with us3 have already been wiped out”, and such a catastrophic decline of animal populations thus indicates that the sixth mass extinction is already under way.

But why should we, as humans, care even if we lost more than 75% of our animals through mass extinction? Because given how interdependent different animals are in the ecosystem web – Domino Collapse – even humans would be adversely affected.

Take insects, for example. If tens of thousands of species of insects go extinct before the environment can adapt to their absence, then thousands of species of trees too would disappear as many species of trees are dependent on insects for pollination. And if trees disappear, the death knell would be all but sounded for the human race.5 Our air would be filthy, toxic, and the ambient temperature of the Earth would rise by several degrees. The rate of soil degradation would rise, and so will the rate of soil erosion resulting in the loss of arable land. Rainfall would be seriously affected, and in turn, so would be the quality of our freshwater sources. The human animal, assuredly, would be negatively hit.

Therefore, given that this mass extinction could prove to be a credible threat to human survival, it is rather discomfiting to realize that we – the primary reason behind this extinction episode – appear to be blind to it. Two reasons explain why?

The first reason: The two species that disappear every year are ones that either are not alluring enough for us [not as alluring as the lion, for example] or live in isolated corners of the world, and, hence, we never really feel their loss.

For instance, do you know of the Catarina Pupfish? Or of the Christmas Island Pipistrelle? The Pyrenean Ibex? All three disappeared for good in the recent past, but how many of us are aware of this fact.

The second reason that contributes to our not being fully informed of the threat of mass extinction is that previous research studies have focused strongly only on the ‘end point’ – the complete extinction of animal species – to deduce the health of Earth’s wildlife. And this approach, the study in question highlights, is the fundamental reason why previous studies have underestimated the magnitude of the present mass extinction. The following paragraphs explain this in greater detail.

Consider, for the sake of argument, an animal species ‘X’. This animal X is spread across fifteen different countries in Asia. This animal’s ‘global population’, in other words, comprises ‘local populations’ spread across fifteen different countries. There would be one local population, of a certain number of individuals, of animal X in one country; another local population, of a certain number of individuals, in another country, and so on.

Suppose, after a year, we observe that out of the fifteen local populations, fourteen have been wiped out – local population extinctions – and only one last local population exists.

In such a scenario, if we were to concentrate only on the ‘end point’ – the complete extinction of this animal species – we would simply put a tick mark against animal X and report it as ‘not extinct’ since that one last local population still exists. And here lies the problem.

This strict binary of ‘extinct‘ or ‘not extinct’ is simply too coarse a method to capture the true health of an animal species in the wild. In this case, for example, by simply labelling animal X as ‘not extinct’ we fail to capture the critical detail that animal X is faring miserably because its local populations have suffered from a drastic decline: In this hypothetical scenario, from 15 to 1. Hence, the underestimation of the magnitude of mass extinction.


Therefore, according to the study in question, to better gauge the true estimate of the magnitude of the present mass extinction event, it is imperative that one should focus more on the extinctions of the local populations, and not just on the global extinction of a species. Just because an animal lives, does not imply it thrives.

All previous studies have followed the above, albeit flawed, approach: of concentrating only on the ‘end point’. And thus these studies suffer from the misconception that the phase of biodiversity loss is only just beginning, and humankind has the luxury of several decades to counter it. The rate of extinction, after all, is only two animals/per year. But the study in question asserts the contrary through rather aggressive rhetoric: “We emphasise that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short, probably two or three decades at most.” Probably, even less.

Of course, this is not to say that humankind will go extinct within a few decades; but that if we do not begin to act right now, then this mass extinction will prove to be irreversible after two or three decades. Consequently, the extinction of the human race will, in all likelihood, closely follow.

To back such a strong claim, this study follows a novel approach. It takes into account, unlike prior studies, two important factors that directly precede the ‘end point‘, i.e. the global extinction of an animal species. First, as delineated above, the decrease in the local populations of different animal species over the last hundred years. Second, the shrinkage of their geographical habitats over the same time. [Note: For this study, the local populations of 27,600 vertebrates were considered, which is a small fraction of the total number of animal species in the world, about 8.7 million7.]

The study reports that over the last hundred years about one billion local populations of different animal species have gone extinct. One. Billion. Again, to repeat, this does not imply that one billion animal species have gone globally/completely extinct in the world; but that a total of one billion local populations of different species have been wiped out forever in certain regions of the world while still probably being present in other regions of the world. Hence, ‘local’ extinction.

Thousands of local populations of the Asiatic Lion, for instance, were once found all over India. But over time, all these local populations – along with the one billion local populations of other animals – have gone extinct. Today, the last few local populations of the Asiatic Lion are now only found in an isolated pocket, the Gir Forest, situated in the state of Gujarat. Once these last few local populations go extinct, the Asiatic Lion will be declared ‘globally extinct’, not to be found anywhere in the globe.

The study discovers another disturbing fact.

Over the last hundred years, 32% of Earth’s vertebrate species have decreased in population size and range. Of the 177 mammals analysed in the study, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges, and the ranges of more than 40% of the species have decreased by more than 80%. Even animal species – categorised as ‘Least Concern’ – too have been suffering from similar woes and are tending inexorably towards the ‘Endangered’ category.

“Our data indicate that beyond species extinctions, Earth is experiencing a huge episode of [local] population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilisation. Humanity will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe.”

Therefore, even if only ‘two’ animal species are going globally extinct every year, this number – ‘two’ – belies the drastic and widespread extinction of hundreds of thousands of local populations of different animal species all around the world. Eventually, such local population and habitat losses will lead to the global extinctions of thousands of animal species over a short duration of time: mass extinction.

So, what do we do to counter this wave of local population extinctions, and thus in turn stall the sixth mass extinction?

To answer this question, one may talk of wildlife conservation programmes. Of ombudsman bodies. Of national policies. Of international partnerships. But the real answer to this question is one that we – and any high school student – have known too well and for far too long. An answer that has been repeated so many times that it seems to have lost its potency:

Reduce consumption3. Rein in population3.

Considering the unpalatable claims of the study, however, it should come as no surprise that certain scientists have taken issue with it and questioned its findings, and not without good reason.

These scientists find the study to be ‘alarmist’ and accuse it of crying Wolf! because mass extinction events are far more severe in their intent. These sceptics4 believe that since mass extinction events unfold over hundreds of thousands of years, it is simply too soon to convince ourselves we are knee-deep in another one. The study, after all, has considered the number of animal extinctions, and that too only of vertebrates, over only the last hundred years – a blink of an eye when compared to the duration of previous mass extinctions. What of insects and other non-vertebrates? By focussing only on 27,600 vertebrates, a small subset of the total 8.7 million animal species, the study may be reporting a mass extinction event that is far more severe, even exaggerated, in magnitude than what it actually is.

Furthermore, one may even argue, that the human animal may be able to engineer solutions to alleviate the ill effects of mass extinction. Again, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, it would be wise to note that a biological mass extinction event, after all, is not a sudden guillotine that would end all humankind with one swift fell swoop. Yes, thousands of animal species do go extinct at a high rate and over a ‘short window’ of time, but this short window of time stretches over hundreds of thousands of years. And this window of time could be time enough for the human to develop robots to pollinate trees. To artificially synthesise meat, if the world’s fisheries were affected. To even create disruptive technologies that could mimic the role of otherwise extinct plants and trees to ensure the atmospheric oxygen, along with other essential gases, is maintained at a certain vital level. By then, we may have even colonised other planets. So, the threat of mass extinction may not be as bad as it sounds, at least not to the human.

Yes, this study does claim that if we do not act now – two or three decades, at most – the mass extinction would be irreversible. Consequently, soon, the rate of local population extinction could rise cancerously from what it is now and result in a precipitous drop of biodiversity, thus threatening human survival.

But will the drop in biodiversity be quick and significant enough to outmanoeuvre human technological growth? This is one question that needs to be considered before we sound the alarm.

Yet, dare I say, since we have already wiped out 50% of our vertebrates over the last hundred years3, we could soon lose another 50% if something is not done. And, personally, given the momentum of extinction, I wonder if there will be time enough for the human animal to cope with it – through technology, or otherwise. Furthermore, such a rate of biodiversity loss could prove to be something that will be far greater than even the most catastrophic of the previous mass extinction episodes:

“This makes it even more urgent. All previous mass extinction episodes spanned over hundreds of thousands of years, but this mass extinction is happening now, and over only a few hundred years!” Said Gerardo Ceballos, the lead author of the study, in an interview with me.

He continued: “And what of the sceptics you speak of? I know of only two scientists who say that there is no sixth mass extinction. If we do not act within the next two or three decades to reverse this mass extinction, our annihilation would be certain and complete. In fact, what is the point in waiting for the mass extinction to worsen in order to satisfy ourselves, beyond doubt, that it really, really is happening? Because then it would be too late for us to do anything. It is rather trivial to wait for the extinction to get over and say ‘Oh look it really did happen’, because by then we would have been long gone. We must act. Now.”

 

The tempest rages and gathers momentum, but the ostrich burrows her head deeper into her solace of ostensible peace. The ostrich also seems to forget that her wings cannot bear flight. Her limbs are fast, but only so fast.

 

Citations:

1Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle, and Todd M. Palmer. “Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction.” Science advances 1, no. 5 (2015): e1400253.

2Wake, David B., and Vance T. Vredenburg. “Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. Supplement 1 (2008): 11466-11473.

3Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo. “Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.30 (2017): E6089-E6096.

4https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/07/maybe-were-at-the-start-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction-after-all/533124/

5https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/our-science/no_trees_no_humans

6Kalinkat, Gregor, Sonja C. Jähnig, and Jonathan M. Jeschke. “Exceptional body size–extinction risk relations shed new light on the freshwater biodiversity crisis.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017): 201717087.

7Mora, Camilo, Derek P. Tittensor, Sina Adl, Alastair GB Simpson, and Boris Worm. “How many species are there on Earth and in the ocean?.” PLoS biology 9, no. 8 (2011): e1001127.

8Darroch, Simon AF, Erik A. Sperling, Thomas H. Boag, Rachel A. Racicot, Sara J. Mason, Alex S. Morgan, Sarah Tweedt et al. “Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacara biota.” In Proc. R. Soc. B, vol. 282, no. 1814, p. 20151003. The Royal Society, 2015.

 

Somendra Singh Kharola is a published poet and a freelance science writer based in Bengaluru. 

The unbiased reviewers – do they exist?

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Can scientists really be holier-than-thou?

“It’s been four weeks since Sneha submitted her paper and she is in that nail-biting, insomnia-inducing, and anxiously-checking-your-mail-every-few-minutes phase. Only thing one can do at that point is hope the reviews will be impartial and not too harsh!”

All scientists know this gut-wrenching and helpless feeling where you can do nothing but wait when your paper is out for review. Peer reviewing is a bridge every researcher has to cross in order to communicate their findings and its validity to the scientific community. Although it is a bench mark of research quality, it is by no means a flawless concept. It assumes that all scientists are altruistic, moral abiders of the scientific norms. Universalism, one of the four scientific norms, points that scientific validity is free from the sociopolitical status or personal attributes of the individual. But, violation of all forms of norms is a common practice, and scientific norms and scientists are no exception.

Single-blind peer review is the conventional or the most common form of peer reviewing where the reviewers know who the authors are, but the authors are blind to the identity of reviewers. The alternatives to this form of peer reviewing are open or double blind reviews. Although open review process is more transparent, there has been debate that the knowledge of author names and affiliations in both single and open reviews may lead to a more biased assessment of the scientific work.

 

The experiment

To test possible bias in single blind versus double blind peer reviews, Andrew Tomkins and colleagues from the Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing conducted a controlled experiment for papers submitted to the 10th Association for Computing Machinery International Conference (WSDM 2017) which was published in PNAS November 2017 issue [1]. They chose this model as computer science research is first sent to peer reviewed conferences rather than journals. An expert committee was set up which reviewed full-length submissions and four members reviewed each paper. Two of the reviewers had access to author information (single blind), while the other two had none (double blind). Reviewers considered each manuscript and entered a bid (yes, no, or maybe) on whether they were willing to review the paper. They then scored the manuscript ranging from +6 (strongly recommended to accept) to -6 (strongly recommended to reject). The reviewers also provided a ‘rank’ which ranged from 4 (top paper seen by the reviewer) to 1 (the bottom 50% of the manuscripts seen by the reviewer in their batch). Subsequently, the authors collected information as to how single and blind reviewers differed in bidding, reviewing, and entering scores for each paper.

 

The authors wanted to test three particular forms of biases: the Matilda effect, where the papers from first author male papers are given higher scientific credit; the Mathew effect, where famous authors get more recognition; and the third, where biases may emerge due to the acclaim of affiliated institutes. To test these biases, they selected the following covariates for the analysis: female author, famous author, paper form a top university, paper from top company. Tomkins et al. found that the odds were higher for a single blind reviewer to give a positive score to a paper if was from a famous author (odds: 1.6), famous university (odds: 1.58), or a top company (odds: 2.1). They also found that single blind reviewers bid less frequently (22% less than double blind reviewers) and preferentially bid for papers from top universities and top companies. Although they did not find that single or double blind reviewers treated papers from first female author papers differently in this paper, they also conducted a meta-analysis where they analysed their study along with other studies on the effect of gender on reviewing, and there they found significant results.

 

Thus for the same paper, a reviewer who knows that it is from a reputed author or university has a higher likelihood of recommending it than a reviewer who does not have access to this information. Also, if a paper is from a reputed author, university, or company, more single blind reviewers bid to review it and thus, it may be assigned to more knowledgeable or field appropriate reviewers which may further alter the chances of acceptance or rejection of a paper.

 

If the single blind review process seems so murky, is double blind the way to go? If only it were so simple.

 

Wading the tricky waters of double blind reviews

In 2009, an international and cross-disciplinary survey was conducted across 4000 researchers where majority of the researchers (76%) said that they considered double blind peer review “the most effective form of peer review”. But double blind review process has its pitfalls. In most cases, the reviewer can guess the author affiliations if it is from a well-known group. Some journals recommend removing phrases such as ‘we previously showed’, but it is hard to be anonymous in today’s globally connected world as most research groups discuss published and unpublished work in ongoing conferences. Also, most of the papers in physics, math, and computer science are pre-published in e print archive arXiv which makes the anonymity impossible.

Since June 2013, Nature Geoscience and Nature Climate Change have been offering double blind reviews as an option and later it expanded the option to all its journals. Recently, Nature Publishing Group presented the analysis on double blind peer reviewing using data from 25 Nature-branded journals from March 2015 to February 2017 in the Eighth International Congress on Peer Review (London). Out of 106,373 submissions, only 14% of authors opted for double blind reviews in Nature, 12% opted for it in sister Nature journals, and 9% opted for it in Nature Communications. Of those opting for double blind reviews, 32% were Indian authors, 22% were Chinese, 8% from France, and 7% from USA. This suggests the double blind route is preferred by scientists who fear potential discrimination. Ironically, only 25% of papers submitted for double-blind review were accepted compared to 44% submitted for single-blind review.

 

In search for a fair scientific community

Even though studies suggest biases in single blind peer review process, it is still regarded with skepticism amongst the researchers with only one in eight going for double blind reviews.  Also, it has a few kinks in the ‘double blindedness’ with the existence of preprint archives and conferences.

 

So is there any point in double blind reviews?

 

Universalism states that scientific validity should be free from the sociopolitical status or personal attributes of the individual. But scientists, like all humans, harbor conscious and subconscious biases, and double blind peer reviews maybe a small effort, if only in principle, remove them.

 

References:

[1]      A. Tomkins, M. Zhang, and W. D. Heavlin, “Reviewer bias in single- versus double-blind peer review.,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., vol. 114, no. 48, pp. 12708–12713, Nov. 2017.

 

P. Surat Saravanan has a PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and is currently, a freelance science editor and writer.

Should we ban PET bottles?

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Source. Wikimedia Commons.

A recent article in DNA reported that the Maharashtra government plans to introduce a ban on plastic bottles, starting with government offices and educational institutions in March 2018, and then eventually banning these everywhere else.

Most of the plastic bottles that we encounter are PET bottles, made from a plastic called polyethyleneterephthalate.  India produced about 1.5 million tons of PET in 2015-16.  Almost all the PET produced goes into making the roughly 7 billion PET bottles that are consumed globally each year.  These bottles are designed as “use and throw” disposable objects.  This is clearly an unsustainable proposition, at odds with the paradigm of a circular economy where we minimize waste by increased reuse and recycling.

Therefore, is banning the use of plastic PET bottles the way to go?  Unfortunately, this isn’t a particularly straightforward question to answer.  While PET bottles are mostly used only once (or, in our country, a few times), the bottles constitute a valuable component of the waste stream.  What this means is that there is sufficient economic value in used PET bottles for it to be worthwhile for rag-pickers to separate these out for resale to recyclers.  Therefore, unlike other packaging plastic materials such as thin polythene plastic carry bags, a large fraction of the used PET bottles are recycled and reincarnated as fibers for carpets, etc.  So, while we do use a large number of PET bottles, a reasonable fraction of these, at least in India, are collected and recycled – in the process supporting an industry that employs a large number of people.  Finally, is there a feasible alternative to PET bottles?  The DNA report quotes the Maharashtra Environment Minister, Mr. Ramdas Kadam saying that mineral water producers could switch to glass from PET.  Is the use of glass bottles more environmentally friendly than PET?  Glass is significantly heavier than PET, thus leading to increased vehicular emissions during transportation.  Glass is also significantly more brittle as compared to PET, increasing the chances of breakage during transportation/use.  Therefore, the choice between PET and glass bottles for high volume, mass consumption applications is not an easy one and is worth debating.  Should we as a society move away from the increased use of PET bottles?  Is there such a thing as responsible use of PET bottles?  Do feasible alternatives exist to PET, or can such alternatives be created if we were to establish a time frame to phase out PET bottles?