Ashis Nandy

4 posts

Who's to blame for the American right's distrust of science?

4 min read
Analysis Science Ashis Nandy burden of proof Donald Trump Laurie Penny Nature Human Behaviour political right Politico pseudoscience reason of state science and society Scientific American scientific debates

This study unambiguously suggests that scientific journals do the institution of science no favor when they insert themselves so directly in the political debate, especially at a time when trust in th…

What is academic freedom?

6 min read
Analysis academic freedom academic freedom index Ashis Nandy deliberative democracy freedom of cultural expression gender identity marketplace of ideas right to science Scholars At Risk Network UN ICESCR University of Erlangen-Nuremberg University of Gothenburg V-Dem Project

Note: I originally wrote two versions of this article for The Wire; one, a 'newsier' version, was published in June 2020. I'd intended to publish the version below, which is more of a disc…

Trump, science denial and violence

2 min read
Science anti-masker anti-vaxxer Ashis Nandy Challakere COVID-19 disease modelling Donald Trump history of science India-based Neutrino Observatory Joe Biden Kudankulam nuclear power plant medical care medical ethics political mathematics public hospitals reason of state Science City science denialism scientism social epidemiology Sterlite Thoothukudi US presidential election

For a few days last week, before the mail-in votes had been counted in the US, the contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump seemed set for a nail-biting finish. In this time a lot of people expresse…