Analysis

244 posts

Robbing NISAR to pay ISRO

6 min read
Analysis Science AK Anil Kumar DFSAR earthquake forecasting geological profiling ground-penetrating radar Indian Space Research Organisation ISTRAC Karen St Germain L-band radar mesh antenna NASA S-band radar synthetic aperture radar The Free Press Journal

A.K. Anil Kumar, the director of ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (a.k.a. ISTRAC), has reportedly made some seriously misleading comments as part of his convocation address at a Mah…

New labour codes

5 min read
Analysis Anna University Concurrent List contractors Employees' State Insurance gig workers hazardous work informal labour informal sector labour codes labour law labour rights Ministry of Labour and Employment platform workers Provident Fund risk-based inspection sanitation workers social security workers welfare

On November 21, the Union government said the four consolidated labour codes on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety and health had been brought into force, replacing…

Why do we trust scientists?

7 min read
Analysis Culture Science Brian Keating Brian Wansink communalism contributory expertise epistemic dependence facts Francesca Gino Harry Collins Indian knowledge systems interactional expertise John Hardwig Max Weber Mertonian norms organised scepticism p-hacking rational-legal authority Robert Evans scientific expertise social knowledge social prestige

Individuals can’t master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science and the suggestions of their exponents to make decisions.…

On Jane Goodall

5 min read
Analysis Science Bigfoot bushmeat chimpanzees Colonialism Derek Bryceson Eslom Mpongo ethology genetically modified organisms Gombe Stream National Park hunting game Jane Goodall population control Rashidi Kikwale Seeds of Hope Tanzania whataboutery zoonotic spillover

Jane Goodall was a celebrated figure in conservation. Her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania redefined primatology. However, more than a few publications as well as co…

What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like?

7 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science Bayes's rule Bayesian network Bayesianism Choi operators commutativity completely positive trace-preserving map noise correction Physical Review Letters principle of minimum change probability quantum computing quantum information theory stochastic processes unitarity variational Bayesian inference

Bayes's rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its simplest form, the rule tells us how to…

Using 10,000 atoms and 1 to probe the Bohr-Einstein debate

9 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science Albert Einstein Bohr-Einstein debate complementarity Debye-Waller factor double-slit experiment hidden variables lasers Niels Bohr optical lattice optical tweezer Pan Jianwei quantum entanglement Quantum mechanics rubidium atoms scattered light uncertainty principle wavepacket Wolfgang Ketterle

The double-slit experiment has often been described as the most beautiful demonstration in physics. In one striking image, it shows the strange dual character of matter and light. When particles such…