women in STEM - Fresh Lime Soda

On India's new 'Vigyan Puraskar' awards

Sep 21, 2023 4 min read

The Government of India has replaced the 300 or so awards for scientists it used to give out until this year with the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP), a set of four awards with 56 laureates, The Hindu…

A well-meaning manel is not a good panel

May 16, 2023 2 min read

Culture Science history of science manel Meera Nanda women in science women in STEM

It's time the good intentions of the organisers cease to matter.…

Gender equity in retractions

May 7, 2023 3 min read

Analysis Science ETH Zurich Marcella Carollo PLoS ONE research misconduct research papers retraction Retraction Watch women in science women in STEM

From the abstract of a fascinating study published in PLoS ONE on May 3, 2023: … this study investigated gender differences in authorship of retracted papers in biomedical sciences available on Retra…

Some science prizes are only for men

Feb 22, 2023 3 min read

Analysis Culture Science bad faith Bias Watch MS Valiathan National Science Day Nobel Prize S Natarajan Samir K Maji SASTRA Deemed University T Pradeep women in STEM

Say Someone has won the Nobel Prize for physics, perhaps the most prestigious honour (as awards go) for a physicist. What would it mean for all the future awards given to this Someone? One thing that…

The Nobel intent

Mar 5, 2020 1 min read

Science Donna Strickland Gert Cori Marie Curie Nobel Prize for Chemistry Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology Nobel Prize for physics women in STEM Women's Day

You've probably tired of this but I can't. The Nobel Prize folks just sent out a newsletter ahead of Women's Day, on March 8, describing the achievements of female laureates of each of the…

Social media and science communication

Dec 30, 2019 7 min read

Op-eds Scicomm echo chamber Facebook homophilic segregation LGBTQIA+ news publishing role models science communication scientific paper social media Twitter women in STEM

The following article was originally intended for an Indian publication but I withdrew from the commission because I couldn’t rework the piece according to changes they required, mostly for lack of fo…

Two sides of the road and the gutter next to it

Oct 3, 2019 3 min read

Culture Op-eds bias Bob Woodward Donald Trump ignorance Jay Rosen Kary Mullis Nobel Prizes objectivity Omar Kelly Poynter Richard Feynman Surjit Bhalla Swarajya Mag The New York Times victim-blaming victimisation view from nowhere women in STEM

I have a mid-October deadline for an essay so obviously when I started reading up on the topic this morning, I ended up on a different part of the web – where I found this: a piece by a journalist tal…

Limitations of the Finkbeiner test

Jan 7, 2018 3 min read

Life notes Scicomm affirmative action Ann Finkbeiner Finkbeiner test science journalism The Life of Science women in STEM

This post was republished on The Wire on January 8, 2018. The Finkbeiner test, named for science writer Ann Finkbeiner, was created to check whether a profile of a female scientist published by a mai…

Why do we cover the Nobel Prize announcements?

Oct 2, 2017 2 min read

Uncategorized Abel Prize Lasker Award media coverage Nobel Committee Nobel Prizes science journalism SS Bhatnagar Award Wolf Prize women in STEM

The Nobel Prizes are too big to fail. Even if they've become beset by a host of problems, such as: 1. Long gap between invention/discovery and recognition, 2. A large cash component given to ol…

Some thoughts on the Mack/Dorigo Twitter exchange, and Zivkovic, Feyerabend, etc.

May 30, 2017 3 min read

Uncategorized Bora Zivkovic gender Geoff Marcy incommensurability Katherine Mack Paul Feyerabend privilege sexism sexual harassment sexuality Tommaso Dorigo women in STEM

Aspirants flock to role models. The 'underlying human' must not jeopardise their conversation by being a dick.…