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Rationally Speaking: Between scientists and citizens, part I - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.sg/...tists-and-citizens-part-i.html Expertise Science Science Communication Science Journalism Jargon Language Authority Power
shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The authors suggest that there are two publics for science communication, one that is liberal, educated and with a number of resources at its disposals; the other with less predictable and less-formed opinions. The authors explored empirically (via a survey of 108 Colorado citizens) the responses of liberal and educated people to scientific jargon by exposing them to two “treatments”: jargon-laden vs lay terminology news articles. The results found that scientists were considered the most credible sources in the specific area of environmental science (94.3% agreed), followed by activists (61.1%). The least credible were industry representatives, clergy and celebrities. (Remember, this is among liberal educated people.) Interestingly, the use of jargon per se did not increase acceptance of the news source or of the content of the story. So the presence of scientific expertise is important, not so the presence of actual scientific details in the story.
  • There is no complete account of the scientific method, and again one can choose certain methods rather than others, depending on what one is trying to accomplish (a choice that is itself informed by one’s values). And of course the Duhem-Quine thesis shows that there is no straightforward way to falsify scientific theories (contra Popper). If there were supernatural causes that interact with (or override) the causes being studied by science, but are themselves undiscoverable, this would lead to false conclusions and bad predictions. Which means that the truth is discoverable empirically only if such supernatural causes are not active. Science cannot answer the question of whether such factors are present, which raises the question of whether we ought to proceed as if they were not (i.e., methodological naturalism).
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Jun 12
     
    Expertise is often thought of in terms of skills, but within the context of science communication it really refers to authority and credibility. Expertise is communicated at least in part through the use of jargon, with which of course most journalists are not familiar. Jargon provides an air of authority, but at the same time the concepts referred to become inaccessible to non-specialists. Interestingly, journalists prefer sources that limit the use of jargon, but they themselves deploy jargon to demonstrate scientific proficiency.
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Skepticblog » Martin Gardner's Signs of a Crank - 0 views

skepticblog.org/...rtin-gardners-signs-of-a-crank Science Pseudo-Science
shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Cranks tend to work in isolation from their colleagues.
  • Cranks tend to be paranoid.
  • Cranks tend to consider themselves geniuses.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Cranks tend to regard their colleagues and critics as stupid.
  • Cranks tend to believe there is a conspiracy against them.
  • Cranks tend to criticize the work of big names in science.
  • Cranks tend to invent their own terminology, sometimes their own sciences, and tend to write in their own overcomplicated jargon.
  • Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10
     
    MARTIN GARDNER'S SIGNS OF A CRANK by BRIAN DUNNING, Jul 08 2010
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Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists: Scient... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm Science Pseudo-Science
shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10 - Cached
  • In 1950 Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled "The Hermit Scientist," about what we would today call pseudoscientists.
  • there has been some progress since Gardner offered his first criticisms of pseudoscience. Now largely antiquated are his chapters on believers in a flat Earth, a hollow Earth, Atlantis and Lemuria, Alfred William Lawson, Roger Babson, Trofim Lysenko, Wilhelm Reich and Alfred Korzybski. But disturbingly, a good two thirds of the book's contents are relevant today, including Gardner's discussions of homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, iridiagnosis (reading the iris of the eye to deter- mine bodily malfunctions), food faddists, cancer cures and other forms of medical quackery, Edgar Cayce, the Great Pyramid's alleged mystical powers, handwriting analysis, ESP and PK (psychokinesis), reincarnation, dowsing rods, eccentric sexual theories, and theories of group racial differences.
  • The "hermit scientist," a youthful Gardner wrote, works alone and is ignored by mainstream scientists. "Such neglect, of course, only strengthens the convictions of the self-declared genius."
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  • Even then Gardner was bemoaning that some beliefs never seem to go out of vogue, as he recalled an H. L. Mencken quip from the 1920s: "Heave an egg out of a Pullman window, and you will hit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere in the U.S. today." Gardner cautions that when religious superstition should be on the wane, it is easy "to forget that thousands of high school teachers of biology, in many of our southern states, are still afraid to teach the theory of evolution for fear of losing their jobs." Today creationism has spread northward and mutated into the oxymoronic form of "creation science."
  • the differences between science and pseudoscience. On the one extreme we have ideas that are most certainly false, "such as the dianetic view that a one-day-old embryo can make sound recordings of its mother's conversation." In the borderlands between the two "are theories advanced as working hypotheses, but highly debatable because of the lack of sufficient data." Of these Gardner selects a most propitious propitious example: "the theory that the universe is expanding." That theory would now fall at the other extreme end of the spectrum, where lie "theories al- most certainly true, such as the belief that the Earth is round or that men and beasts are distant cousins."
  • How can we tell if someone is a scientific crank? Gardner offers this advice: (1) "First and most important of these traits is that cranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues." Cranks typically do not understand how the scientific process operates—that they need to try out their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to accept.
  • (2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways: (1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein....(5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.
  • "If the present trend continues," Gardner concludes, "we can expect a wide variety of these men, with theories yet unimaginable, to put in their appearance in the years immediately ahead. They will write impressive books, give inspiring lectures, organize exciting cults. They may achieve a following of one—or one million. In any case, it will be well for ourselves and for society if we are on our guard against them."
  • Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10
     
    May 23, 2010 | 31 comments Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists Fifty years ago Gardner launched the modern skeptical movement. Unfortunately, much of what he wrote about is still current today By Michael Shermer   
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The Fake Scandal of Climategate - 0 views

www.skepticalscience.com/fake-scandal-Climategate.html Science Internet Climate Science ClimateGate
shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The most comprehensive inquiry was the Independent Climate Change Email Review led by Sir Muir Russell, commissioned by UEA to examine the behaviour of the CRU scientists (but not the scientific validity of their work). It published its final report in July 2010
  • It focused on what the CRU scientists did, not what they said, investigating the evidence for and against each allegation. It interviewed CRU and UEA staff, and took 111 submissions including one from CRU itself. And it also did something the media completely failed to do: it attempted to put the actions of CRU scientists into context.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 21 Nov 10
       
      Data, in the form of email correspondence, requires context to be interpreted "objectively" and "accurately" =)
  • The Review went back to primary sources to see if CRU really was hiding or falsifying their data. It considered how much CRU’s actions influenced the IPCC’s conclusions about temperatures during the past millennium. It commissioned a paper by Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, on the context of scientific peer review. And it asked IPCC Review Editors how much influence individuals could wield on writing groups.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Many of these are things any journalist could have done relatively easily, but few ever bothered to do.
  • the emergence of the blogosphere requires significantly more openness from scientists. However, providing the details necessary to validate large datasets can be difficult and time-consuming, and how FoI laws apply to research is still an evolving area. Meanwhile, the public needs to understand that science cannot and does not produce absolutely precise answers. Though the uncertainties may become smaller and better constrained over time, uncertainty in science is a fact of life which policymakers have to deal with. The chapter concludes: “the Review would urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand”.
  • email is less formal than other forms of communication: “Extreme forms of language are frequently applied to quite normal situations by people who would never use it in other communication channels.” The CRU scientists assumed their emails to be private, so they used “slang, jargon and acronyms” which would have been more fully explained had they been talking to the public. And although some emails suggest CRU went out of their way to make life difficult for their critics, there are others which suggest they were bending over backwards to be honest. Therefore the Review found “the e-mails cannot always be relied upon as evidence of what actually occurred, nor indicative of actual behaviour that is extreme, exceptional or unprofessional.” [section 4.3]
  • when put into the proper context, what do these emails actually reveal about the behaviour of the CRU scientists? The report concluded (its emphasis):
  • we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.
  • we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.
  • “But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognize not only the significance of statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the University and indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science.” [1.3]
  • The argument that Climategate reveals an international climate science conspiracy is not really a very skeptical one. Sure, it is skeptical in the weak sense of questioning authority, but it stops there. Unlike true skepticism, it doesn’t go on to objectively examine all the evidence and draw a conclusion based on that evidence. Instead, it cherry-picks suggestive emails, seeing everything as incontrovertible evidence of a conspiracy, and concludes all of mainstream climate science is guilty by association. This is not skepticism; this is conspiracy theory.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 21 Nov 10
       
      How then do we know that we have examined ALL the evidence? What about the context of evidence then? 
  • The media dropped the ball There is a famous quotation attributed to Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” This is more true in the internet age than it was when Mark Twain was alive. Unfortunately, it took months for the Climategate inquiries to put on their shoes, and by the time they reported, the damage had already been done. The media acted as an uncritical loudspeaker for the initial allegations, which will now continue to circulate around the world forever, then failed to give anywhere near the same amount of coverage to the inquiries clearing the scientists involved. For instance, Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian published no less than 85 stories about Climategate, but not one about the Muir Russell inquiry.
  • Even the Guardian, who have a relatively good track record on environmental reporting and were quick to criticize the worst excesses of climate conspiracy theorists, could not resist the lure of stolen emails. As George Monbiot writes, journalists see FoI requests and email hacking as a way of keeping people accountable, rather than the distraction from actual science which they are to scientists. In contrast, CRU director Phil Jones says: “I wish people would spend as much time reading my scientific papers as they do reading my e-mails.”
  • This is part of a broader problem with climate change reporting: the media holds scientists to far higher standards than it does contrarians. Climate scientists have to be right 100% of the time, but contrarians apparently can get away with being wrong nearly 100% of the time. The tiniest errors of climate scientists are nitpicked and blown out of all proportion, but contrarians get away with monstrous distortions and cherry-picking of evidence. Around the same time The Australian was bashing climate scientists, the same newspaper had no problem publishing Viscount Monckton’s blatant misrepresentations of IPCC projections (not to mention his demonstrably false conspiracy theory that the Copenhagen summit was a plot to establish a world government).
  • In the current model of environmental reporting, the contrarians do not lose anything by making baseless accusations. In fact, it is in their interests to throw as much mud at scientists as possible to increase the chance that some of it will stick in the public consciousness. But there is untold damage to the reputation of the scientists against whom the accusations are being made. We can only hope that in future the media will be less quick to jump to conclusions. If only editors and producers would stop and think for a moment about what they’re doing: they are playing with the future of the planet.
  • As worthy as this defense is, surely this is the kind of political bun-fight SkS has resolutely stayed away from since its inception. The debate can only become a quagmire of competing claims, because this is part of an adversarial process that does not depend on, or even require, scientific evidence. Only by sticking resolutely to the science and the advocacy of the scientific method can SkS continue to avoid being drowned in the kind of mud through which we are obliged to wade elsewhere.
  • I disagree with gp. It is past time we all got angry, very angry, at what these people have done and continue to do. Dispassionate science doesn't cut it with the denial industry or with the media (and that "or" really isn't there). It's time to fight back with everything we can throw back at them.
  • The fact that three quick fire threads have been run on Climatgate on this excellent blog in the last few days is an indication that Climategate (fairly or not) has does serious damage to the cause of AGW activism. Mass media always overshoots and exaggerates. The AGW alarmists had a very good run - here in Australia protagonists like Tim Flannery and our living science legend Robin Williams were talking catastrophe - the 10 year drought was definitely permanent climate change - rivers might never run again - Robin (100 metre sea level rise) Williams refused to even read the Climategate emails. Climategate swung the pendumum to the other extreme - the scientists (nearly all funded by you and me) were under the pump. Their socks rubbed harder on their sandals as they scrambled for clear air. Cries about criminal hackers funded by big oil, tobacco, rightist conspirators etc were heard. Panchuri cried 'voodoo science' as he denied ever knowing about objections to the preposterous 2035 claim. How things change in a year. The drought is broken over most of Australia - Tim Flannery has gone quiet and Robin Williams is airing a science journo who says that AGW scares have been exaggerated. Some balance might have been restored as the pendulum swung, and our hard working misunderstood scientist bretheren will take more care with their emails in future.
  • "Perhaps a more precise description would be that a common pattern in global warming skeptic arguments is to focus on narrow pieces of evidence while ignoring other evidence that contradicts their argument." And this is the issue the article discuss, but in my opinion this article is in guilt of this as well. It focus on a narrow set of non representative claims, claims which is indeed pure propaganda by some skeptics, however the article also suggest guilt buy association and as such these propaganda claims then gets attributed to the be opinions of the entire skeptic camp. In doing so, the OP becomes guilty of the very same issue the OP tries to address. In other words, the issue I try to raise is not about the exact numbers or figures or any particular facts but the fact that the claim I quoted is obvious nonsense. It is nonsense because it a sweeping statement with no specifics and as such it is an empty statement and means nothing. A second point I been thinking about when reading this article is why should scientist be granted immunity to dirty tricks/propaganda in a political debate? Is it because they speak under the name of science? If that is the case, why shall we not grant the same right to other spokesmen for other organization?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 21 Nov 10
       
      The aspiration to examine ALL evidence is again called into question here. Is it really possible to examine ALL evidence? Even if we have examined them, can we fully represent our examination? From our lab, to the manuscript, to the journal paper, to the news article, to 140characters tweets?
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Rationally Speaking: The sorry state of higher education - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...state-of-higher-education.html Education Plagiarism Humanities Political Economy
shared by Weiye Loh on 03 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • two disconcerting articles crossed my computer screen, both highlighting the increasingly sorry state of higher education, though from very different perspectives. The first is “Ed Dante’s” (actually a pseudonym) piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled The Shadow Scholar. The second is Gregory Petsko’s A Faustian Bargain, published of all places in Genome Biology.
  • There is much to be learned by educators in the Shadow Scholar piece, except the moral that “Dante” would like us to take from it. The anonymous author writes:“Pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work? Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.
  • The point is that plagiarism and cheating happen for a variety of reasons, one of which is the existence of people like Mr. Dante and his company, who set up a business that is clearly unethical and should be illegal. So, pointing fingers at him and his ilk is perfectly reasonable. Yes, there obviously is a “market” for cheating in higher education, and there are complex reasons for it, but he is in a position similar to that of the drug dealer who insists that he is simply providing the commodity to satisfy society’s demand. Much too easy of a way out, and one that doesn’t fly in the case of drug dealers, and shouldn’t fly in the case of ghost cheaters.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • As a teacher at the City University of New York, I am constantly aware of the possibility that my students might cheat on their tests. I do take some elementary precautionary steps
  • Still, my job is not that of the policeman. My students are adults who theoretically are there to learn. If they don’t value that learning and prefer to pay someone else to fake it, so be it, ultimately it is they who lose in the most fundamental sense of the term. Just like drug addicts, to return to my earlier metaphor. And just as in that other case, it is enablers like Mr. Dante who simply can’t duck the moral blame.
  • n open letter to the president of SUNY-Albany, penned by molecular biologist Gregory Petsko. The SUNY-Albany president has recently announced the closing — for budgetary reasons — of the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts at his university.
  • Petsko begins by taking on one of the alleged reasons why SUNY-Albany is slashing the humanities: low enrollment. He correctly points out that the problem can be solved overnight at the stroke of a pen: stop abdicating your responsibilities as educators and actually put constraints on what your students have to take in order to graduate. Make courses in English literature, foreign languages, philosophy and critical thinking, the arts and so on, mandatory or one of a small number of options that the students must consider in order to graduate.
  • But, you might say, that’s cheating the market! Students clearly don’t want to take those courses, and a business should cater to its customers. That type of reasoning is among the most pernicious and idiotic I’ve ever heard. Students are not clients (if anything, their parents, who usually pay the tuition, are), they are not shopping for a new bag or pair of shoes. They do not know what is best for them educationally, that’s why they go to college to begin with. If you are not convinced about how absurd the students-as-clients argument is, consider an analogy: does anyone with functioning brain cells argue that since patients in a hospital pay a bill, they should be dictating how the brain surgeon operates? I didn’t think so.
  • Petsko then tackles the second lame excuse given by the president of SUNY-Albany (and common among the upper administration of plenty of public universities): I can’t do otherwise because of the legislature’s draconian cuts. Except that university budgets are simply too complicated for there not to be any other option. I know this first hand, I’m on a special committee at my own college looking at how to creatively deal with budget cuts handed down to us from the very same (admittedly small minded and dysfunctional) New York state legislature that has prompted SUNY-Albany’s action. As Petsko points out, the president there didn’t even think of involving the faculty and staff in a broad discussion of how to deal with the crisis, he simply announced the cuts on a Friday afternoon and then ran for cover. An example of very poor leadership to say the least, and downright hypocrisy considering all the talk that the same administrator has been dishing out about the university “community.”
  • Finally, there is the argument that the humanities don’t pay for their own way, unlike (some of) the sciences (some of the time). That is indubitably true, but irrelevant. Universities are not businesses, they are places of higher learning. Yes, of course they need to deal with budgets, fund raising and all the rest. But the financial and administrative side has one goal and one goal only: to provide the best education to the students who attend that university.
  • That education simply must include the sciences, philosophy, literature, and the arts, as well as more technical or pragmatic offerings such as medicine, business and law. Why? Because that’s the kind of liberal education that makes for an informed and intelligent citizenry, without which our democracy is but empty talk, and our lives nothing but slavery to the marketplace.
  • Maybe this is not how education works in the US. I thought that general (or compulsory) education (ie. up to high school) is designed to make sure that citizens in a democratic country can perform their civil duties. A balanced and well-rounded education, which includes a healthy mixture of science and humanities, is indeed very important for this purpose. However, college-level education is for personal growth and therefore the person must have a large say about what kind of classes he or she chooses to take. I am disturbed by Massimo's hospital analogy. Students are not ill. They don't go to college to be cured, or to be good citizens. They go to college to learn things that *they* want to learn. Patients are passive. Students are not.I agree that students typically do not know what kind of education is good for them. But who does?
  • students do have a saying in their education. They pick their major, and there are electives. But I object to the idea that they can customize their major any way they want. That assumes they know what the best education for them is, they don't. That's the point of education.
  • The students are in your class to get a good grade, any learning that takes place is purely incidental. Those good grades will look good on their transcript and might convince a future employer that they are smart and thus are worth paying more.
  • I don't know what the dollar to GPA exchange rate is these days, but I don't doubt that there is one.
  • Just how many of your students do you think will remember the extensive complex jargon of philosophy more than a couple of months after they leave your classroom?
  • and our lives nothing but slavery to the marketplace.We are there. Welcome. Where have you been all this time? In a capitalistic/plutocratic society money is power (and free speech too according to the supreme court). Money means a larger/better house/car/clothing/vacation than your neighbor and consequently better mating opportunities. You can mostly blame the women for that one I think just like the peacock's tail.
  • If a student of surgery fails to learn they might maim, kill or cripple someone. If an engineer of airplanes fails to learn they might design a faulty aircraft that fails and kills people. If a student of chemistry fails to learn they might design a faulty drug with unintended and unfortunate side effects, but what exactly would be the harm if a student of philosophy fails to learn Aristotle had to say about elements or Plato had to say about perfect forms? These things are so divorced from people's everyday activities as to be rendered all but meaningless.
  • human knowledge grows by leaps and bounds every day, but human brain capacity does not, so the portion of human knowledge you can personally hold gets smaller by the minute. Learn (and remember) as much as you can as fast as you can and you will still lose ground. You certainly have your work cut out for you emphasizing the importance of Thales in the Age of Twitter and whatever follows it next year.
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Sunita Narain: Indian scientists: missing in action - 0 views

www.business-standard.com/...428350 Science Policy Capitalism
shared by Weiye Loh on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Since then there has been dead silence among the powerful scientific leaders of the country, with one exception. Kiran Karnik, a former employee of ISRO and board member of Deva
  • when the scientists who understand the issue are not prepared to engage with the public, there can be little informed discussion. The cynical public, which sees scams tumble out each day, believes easily that everybody is a crook. But, as I said, the country’s top scientists have withdrawn further into their comfort holes, their opinion frozen in contempt that Indian society is scientifically illiterate. I can assure you in the future there will be even less conversation between scientists and all of us in the public sphere.
  • This is not good. Science is about everyday policy. It needs to be understood and for this it needs to be discussed and deliberated openly and strenuously. But how will this happen if one side — the one with information, knowledge and power — will not engage in public discourse?
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • I suspect Indian scientists have retired hurt to the pavilion. They were exposed to some nasty public scrutiny on a deal made by a premier science research establishment, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), with Devas, a private company, on the allocation of spectrum. The public verdict was that the arrangement was a scandal; public resources had been given away for a song. The government, already scam-bruised, hastily scrapped the contract.
  • Take the issue of genetically-modified (GM) crops. For long this matter has been decided inside closed-door committee rooms, where scientists are comforted by the fact that their decisions will not be challenged. Their defence is “sound science” and “superior knowledge”. It is interesting that the same scientists will accept data produced by private companies pushing the product. Issues of conflict of interest will be brushed aside as integrity cannot be questioned behind closed doors. Silence is the best insurance. This is what happened inside a stuffy committee room, where scientists sat to give permission to Mahyco-Monsanto to grow genetically-modified brinjal.
  • This case involved a vegetable we all eat. This was a matter of science we had the right to know about and to decide upon. The issue made headlines. The reaction of the scientific fraternity was predictable and obnoxious. They resented the questions. They did not want a public debate.
  • As the controversy raged and more people got involved, the scientists ran for cover. They wanted none of this messy street fight. They were meant to advise prime ministers and the likes, not to answer simple questions of people. Finally, when environment minister Jairam Ramesh took the decision on the side of the ordinary vegetable eater, unconvinced by the validity of the scientific data to justify no-harm, scientists were missing in their public reactions. Instead, they whispered about lack of “sound science” in the decision inside committees.
  • The matter did not end there. The minister commissioned an inter-academy inquiry — six top scientific institutions looked into GM crops and Bt-brinjal — expecting a rigorous examination of the technical issues and data gaps. The report released by this committee was shoddy to say the least. It contained no references or attributions and not a single citation. It made sweeping statements and lifted passages from a government newsletter and even from global biotech industry. The report was thrashed. Scientists again withdrew into offended silence.
  • The final report of this apex-science group is marginally better in that it includes citations but it reeks of scientific arrogance cloaked in jargon. The committee did not find it fit to review the matter, which had reached public scrutiny. The report is only a cover for their established opinion about the ‘truth’ of Bt-brinjal. Science for them is certainly not a matter of enquiry, critique or even dissent.
  • the world has changed. No longer is this report meant only for top political and policy leaders, who would be overwhelmed by the weight of the matter, the language and the expert knowledge of the writer. The report will be subjected to public scrutiny. Its lack of rigour will be deliberated, its unquestioned assertion challenged.
  • This is the difference between the manufactured comfortable world of science behind closed doors and the noisy messy world outside. It is clear to me that Indian scientists need confidence to creatively engage in public concerns. The task to build scientific literacy will not happen without their engagement and their tolerance for dissent. The role of science in Indian democracy is being revisited with a new intensity. The only problem is that the key players are missing in action.
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