Intellectual commons

In an interesting piece in Chronicle Review, Mark Oppenheimer urges graduate students (and professors too!) to be interested in (and better yet, contribute to) the broader intellectual discussions and debates (in such magazines as NYRB and NYTimes Book Review, Dissent, etc):

The work of public intellectuals is important to young scholars partly because it helps us [...]

Different meanings of the word ‘replicate’

In the rough-and-tumble world of science, disputes are usually settled in time, as a convergence of evidence accumulates in favor of one hypothesis over another. Until now.

On April 10 economist John R. Lott, Jr., formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, filed a defamation lawsuit against economist Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and [...]

The Oscars of Indian Science: 2006 Edition

Yes, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prizes have been announced for the year 2006. As I said in my post last year, the SSB Prizes are the most prestigeous in India because (a) they represent peer recognition, and (b) they are rare (just one or two in each field). They do come with some [...]

Ranking of universities across the world

Let’s face it: global rankings of universities are here to stay, despite their poor methodologies. Among them, the ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University University probably deserves the award for the worst methodology. It gives a huge weight — 30 percent — to Nobel prizes won by the faculty and alumni, and a [...]

Revenge and retribution: Beware the tricks our minds play

In his NYTimes op-ed, Harvard psychologist and author of the recently published Stumbling on Happiness Daniel Gilbert says:

… In virtually every human society, “He hit me first” provides an acceptable rationale for doing that which is otherwise forbidden. Both civil and religious law provide long lists of behaviors that are illegal or immoral — unless [...]

Los Alamos

It has been quite a while since I noted the Los Alamos scientists’ revolt (through a blog!) that forced the then director to resign. The Economist updates us on what’s happening at Los Alamos.

… At the beginning of June the University of California, which had run Los Alamos since the days of the Manhattan Project, [...]

Punishment and altruism

An interesting paper in Science (a publicly available summary is here; link via Brain Ethics) shows that human beings’ propensity to punish (unfair acts by others) is correlated with their altruism. This finding is based on a pretty large scale study involving populations in no less than 15 different societies or tribes. The implication is [...]

Death of the industrial research lab

Basic research performed in industrial laboratories is declining — is the focus on profitability to the detriment of furthering scientific knowledge?
Do read this interesting article by A. Michael Noll (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California) in Nature Materials.

In metallurgy and materials science, many great researchers started their career at industrial labs. John W. [...]

First anniversary …

… of the infamous Larry Summers episode is just a few days away, and it is time for both his supporters and opponents to get ready for another round of arguments.
It is interesting that though Summers himself has moved on, and instituted some key changes that would make Harvard far more women-friendly, some people would [...]

Caste discrimination

There is indeed much discrimination in our society but there is also a sense of fair play, and that sense is growing. It is a sensitive plant and it should be given fresh air to grow. To insist as a matter of course that there is discrimination against Dalits without even looking at evidence to [...]

“It may happen, but not now, and not to us”

The first anniversary of the south east Asian tsunami is being commemorated as the Remembrance Week. Dilip D’Souza has an excellent series of posts, with snippets from his coverage of not just the 2004 tsunami, but also the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, Gujarat, and the 1999 floods in Orissa.

On the first anniversary [...]