Category Archives: Policy

Policy

Diaspora scientists gauge India’s pandemic ‘new normal’

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What could be the challenges for Indian diaspora scientists wanting to explore career opportunities back home during the novel coronavirus pandemic? Sayan Dutta, a doctoral fellow in the Neurodegenerative Disease Research Laboratory at Purdue University, analyses the key learning from a recent global meet.

Sayan Dutta{credit}Bappaditya Chandra{/credit}

As the global economy took a hit with the coronavirus pandemic, and science job opportunities seemed up in the air, more than 400 diaspora Indian scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs got together in early September 2020 to make sense of what this ‘new normal’ might look like.

At the Science and Research Opportunities in India (Sci-ROI) annual meet – which was forced to go virtual this year, like many other conferences worldwide – this bunch of engaged scientists and researchers heard 40 eminent speakers over four days, keenly picking up nuggets on the current and future projections of the career landscape in India.

A volunteer-run organization established in 2015, Sci-ROI is a gateway for young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs in the U.S. to access professional opportunities across academic, industry and private sectors in India. When we were wrapping up Sci-ROI’s annual event in 2019 at the University of Chicago, its founder Prof. Aseem Ansari prodded me gently about the new challenges we had vowed to undertake in 2020. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that the “new challenges” would entail organising a full-scale virtual event amid a global pandemic.

Back in April 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic shook the world necessitating complete lockdowns, it seemed impossible to organise this year’s in-person event in September. After deliberations, the organising team became sure about two things – that the event should go virtual, and that no one had the slightest hint on how to host a virtual event. But soon enough, a diverse team got working overtime – countless hours of online meetings, event planning, programing, technical troubleshooting, media moderation and visual media creation (all by hidden talents in parallel to being postdocs), were unleashed.

Speakers from 39 Indian institutes joined the panels to address attendees from more than 150 institutes around the world. The deliberations revealed that there has  been no major setback in India’s research funding due to the pandemic yet. Most Indian academic institutions are still actively engaged in the hiring processes, and funding agencies have taken steps to mitigate the challenges thrown up by the pandemic, though in the long run things might slow down.

A session discussing perspectives of new faculty who have relocated to India saw high participation at the virtual event.

Unique sessions such as entrepreneurial seminars and careers beyond the professoriate spotlighted opportunities in both the sectors. India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to widen its support for new biotech start-ups and deep-science entrepreneurial ventures. The conference also brought forward India’s growing career landscape in the sectors of science communication, management, administration, and policy making available to researchers after Ph.D.

Through online polling, participants at the event, mostly from the diaspora, actively identified some major challenges they face while trying to transition back to India.  Among them were the age barrier of 35 years on entry level positions (such as assistant professorship), lack of a centralised and transparent recruitment process, and slow or no correspondence and follow-up emails on their application status from Indian institutes. In view of the pandemic, researchers also strongly advocated making academic applications completely paperless.

Although we did not realize it at the onset, the virtual format of the event turned out to be more informative and far-reaching (involving even the Indian diaspora outside the US) than the traditional format.

A global pandemic got us out of our comfort zones, and we found unique solutions for unforeseen problems. We realized that while in-person interactions are irreplaceable, enabling effective virtual communication is the need of the hour. Sci-ROI’s “by the scholars, for the scholars” event represented a model of such an emerging community, critical for global brain circulation. Alongside the annual event, a virtual recruitment week in October and a central STEM job portal will hopefully enable the growth of stronger collaborations between scientific communities within and outside India.

(Sayan Dutta coordinates collaborations at Sci-ROI, a U.S. based volunteer-run organisation, helping diaspora Indian scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs access professional opportunities in India. He can be reached at sayanm06@gmail.com.)

Why mental health discourse must transcend the pandemic

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Mental health of societies is justifiably under the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, psychiatrist Debanjan Banerjee of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) Bengaluru is sceptical that the important issue may be pushed back into obscurity once the crisis ends.

Debanjan Banerjee

Being a psychiatrist, I have been overwhelmed with the explosion of data, discussion and debate on mental health from even before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by WHO in March 2020. Surprisingly, a virus has suddenly helped peak interest in an aspect of public health that has long been overshadowed in our societies by stigma and neglect.

In the last six months, there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t been invited for webinars or media appearances on mental health or read a research paper or article around this. Various online fora discuss the ‘pertinent matter’ daily. I have discussed, debated and advised on topics ranging from psychiatric disorders to psychological effects  of COVID-19 on populations or special groups (based on age, gender or social status), as well as the future implications of the pandemic. Mental health journals are publishing special supplements related to psychiatry or psychological problems of COVID-19. Like many of my peers, the fertile ground created by the virus has resulted in several publications to my credit in these journals.

The rising curve of ‘COVID-19 related mental health’ provides a tough challenge to the slope of the COVID-19 case curve itself. But has it helped our service delivery and in estimating the mental health problem in this crisis? Perhaps not. Mental and psychosexual health has always been important. Did we need a pandemic to open our eyes to that?

“To worry or not to worry”

That is the most common question I face in public online discussions and media interviews. Has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted psychological health, or are we overestimating the threat? –people seem to be quite confused about that.

So here’s a rational approach to unpack this question – unlike other natural or human-made disasters, pandemics are not ‘a one-shot’ events. The mortality and morbidity continue to rise for months to years, and the rippling effects span the socio-economic, political, psychological and psychosocial dimensions.

COVID-19 related fear, health, anxiety, stigma, stress and sleep disturbances have affected the world’s population. Added to that are financial constraints, disruption of social structure, the effects of physical distancing, lockdowns and the ‘misinfodemic’ (misinformation epidemic).

Population-based research in India, China, UK, USA, Brazil and Italy has established the worsening of psychological status due to the pandemic. Though limited data exists on people already suffering from mental disorders before COVID-19, hypothetically they might be more vulnerable to the effects of chronic stress and trauma. Besides, many of them might lack access to mental healthcare and medications due to travel restrictions. The other vulnerable groups are the frontline workers, the students, the children, elderly and socio-economically impoverished groups, including the migrants.

Interestingly, even though generic measures of ‘stress’ and ‘quality of life’ get reflected in classical quantitative research, the needs for mental wellbeing are mostly similar across the world.

One size does not fit all

I read somewhere that “COVID-19 is a great equalizer”. Of course, it is not.

The needs of a migrant labourer stranded in an overcrowded railway platform are far different from a rural healthcare worker with no access to personal protective equipment (PPE). The factors governing resilience vary widely between someone trapped with an abusive partner and suffering violence during the lockdown and an adolescent deprived of intimacy with his/her partner for months together. In short, COVID-19 has ironically highlighted the crevices in our understanding of what mental health constitutes, the same understanding that has surreptitiously governed the attitudes of the general population and physicians alike for a long time. Beyond the rigid diagnostic criteria of psychiatric disorders and the ‘medicalization’ of mental health, the pandemic displays that psychological wellbeing is as abstract as the ‘mind’ itself and also highly individualized.

It is natural to be worried or anxious during a pandemic. Anxiety is the natural defence to deal with the crisis, and being ‘perfectly composed’ is a myth. The grey but vital line of what constitutes ‘acceptable stress’ and what needs professional help can be markedly polymorphic, again depending on personal and social circumstances.

Contrary to common advocacy recommendations, no one suit fits all. When the socially unprivileged are deprived of basic amenities like food, water, shelter and security, these needs seek much urgent attention than anything else. Mental health is intricately linked with physical, sexual and social health. Divorcing these contexts and giving it a purely ‘psychological’ shape is an injustice to the human mind itself.

Mental health: A piece of the pie

Feeding off the confusion and anxiety around COVID-19 is an alarming new brigade of life-coaches, happiness experts, faith-healers, counsellors, motivators, speakers and theorists – each claiming that they are the best ‘distress-relievers’. This is of grave concern.

Some of these healing methods and their purveyors have been controversial and merit scientific scrutiny. Psychological health, seen as an accommodative arena, has traditionally been an attractive breeding ground for numerous such ‘professional experts’ in mental health. Improvement in any medical disorder (including psychiatric disorders) depends largely on the patient’s trust in the therapist or the doctor-patient relationship, and this factor is exploited many times in advertisements and endorsements about such professions.

Faulty advice can harm patients of psychological distress and disorders. The underlying societal stigma and marginalization against the mentally ill have only helped putting them “away from the society” for ages. The same stigma is prevalent against those testing COVID-19 positive or those working on the frontline exposed to viral risk. Stigma and prejudice are an integral part of the ‘collective mental health’ and are often under-detected, as they cannot be categorized as ‘disorders’.

Social problems that affect mental health – poverty, homelessness, gender-based discrimination, ageism, domestic violence, deprivation of human rights and social injustice – are often politicized or discussed for academic obligations but rarely addressed with sincerity, either at an individual or administrative level. These lacunae get unmasked during a biopsychosocial threat like COVID-19, further re-enforced by the socially-dissociated storm of sudden mental health promotion and awareness.

It is important to realise that mental health can only be conceptualized as holistic psychosocial and psychosexual health. A number of factors are involved in the genesis of stress and trauma during a crisis. That necessitates an assumption and bias-free approach, sensitivity, empathy towards the underprivileged, administrative enthusiasm and collective understanding of the importance of mental health irrespective of the pandemic.

Will it fizzle out?

Mental health, unlike many other disciplines, is quickly capitalised and politicised for short-term gains. My scepticism is that, like any other piece of popular news, the relevance of this ‘hot and in-demand topic’ will fizzle out soon after it has served its purpose.

The most recent example of such event-driven concern is that of a Bollywood film star’s death by suicide, which gave way to the usual conspiracy theories alongside online awareness drives around depression and suicide prevention. I received numerous calls with inquiries on the ‘psychological premise’ of suicide and how it can be prevented.

What we fail to understand is that like diabetes, hypertension, strokes or heart attack, psychiatric problems are also better prevented. The approach of prevention starts right when a child is born, or a family is started. Environmental influences, parenting, education, upbringing and social interactions have as much a role to play in the genesis of mental health problems as genetics. But unlike genetic influence, the other factors can be modified, which gives us a wider angle of interventions. It is rather pointless discussing and criticising suicides with hypotheses about how they could have occurred, as one can’t second guess or retrospectively prevent the premature ending of a life.

The debate around psychological wellbeing during the pandemic will continue enriching our academic and professional lives.  However, whether the numerous webinars, articles, guidelines, Ted talks and public lectures will penetrate the concrete social shell to destigmatize mental health is doubtful.

When the pandemic ebbs, this heightened sensitivity about psychological concerns should not. That might help global mental health and sharpen our preparedness for such crises in future.

Nature India’s latest coverage on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic here. More updates on the global crisis here.

Why ‘hike fellowship’ is a recurrent war cry for India’s researchers

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Microbiologist Yogesh Chawla was part of the team that led the protests demanding hike in research fellowships in India during 2014-15. He rues in this guest post that not much seems to have changed in the country’s treatment of its research scholars since.

Yogesh Chawla

Following months of agitation by young scientists across India, the Indian government announced a hike in fellowships for research scholars earlier this month (February 2019). The stipends for junior research fellows (JRFs) were raised from a monthly Rs 25,000 to Rs 31,000, and that for senior research fellows (SRFs) from Rs 28,000 to Rs 35,000.

The research scholars have been protesting every few years to bring to light the abysmal pay parity, delayed and irregular disbursal of stipends, semester fee charges, and scarcity of fund allocated to science. The protests typically last for a few months reaching a crescendo on social media, and finally end with the science administration promising and then delivering a hike. India’s current government has enhanced their fellowship twice, almost doubling it from Rs 16,000 in 2014 to Rs. 31,000. It is a step, albeit small, in the right direction to bridge the gap in pay disparity of researchers.

However, the challenges facing India’s research scholar are far from over.

History of protests

During the fellowship hike movement of 2014-15, five of us scholars represented the protesting researchers in negotiations with the institutional authorities and government representatives. Several issues were discussed at length then, and still remain unresolved. Policy changes that were mooted then to streamline the system are still pending. A hike is not the only thing to fulfill the vision of better scientific rigour or improvement in the quality of Indian science. One of the objectives of such fellowship hikes is to attract talent to science disciplines by providing economic emoluments parity, laurels, awards and recognition.

The need of the hour is to have a multi-pronged approach to bring Indian science at par with world standards, to make Indian research relevant to the country’s needs, to transform India into a torch bearer of scientific excellence, technological advancements and innovations. These are important but imposing challenges for India and the country’s science policy is a key tool to overcome them.

Researchers gherao Indian science administrators during a protest to demand hike in fellowships in July 2014.

Rewarding merit

How do we bring rigour into India’s science? Can we have measures to reward scholars – the backbone of our scientific quest – who work tirelessly beyond stipulated office hours? Will rewarding the first author for publishing quality research be a game changer?  Publishing in high impact journals may not be the ultimate or accurate parameter of judging the quality of science but it is a practical parameter. A thorough scientific study in a reputed journal does suggest a work of excellence. Impact factors, citations or the impact of research on problems specific to India can be taken as criteria to judge merit. The overarching idea is to reward hard work, judged and scrutinised for scientific quality and rigour by independent peers. This way, we would be able to bring equity to the hard and diligent work. Any scientific misconduct or falsification of data should be made punishable.

Currently, Indian authors publish around 100,000 articles every year but their average citation impact is around 0.8, which is nearly half of the citation impact of articles published from USA or UK (~1.6)1. Rewards for and equity to good quality work would boost the overall scientific rigour. It wouldn’t cost much to the government exchequer but would certainly impact the morale and enthusiasm of researchers favourably. It could be a robust way to kick start ideas, innovations and excellence. Likewise, universities, departments and institutions should be rewarded for their scientific excellence.

However, when impact factors of publications become the criteria for a reward, they potentially exclude scholars and scientists looking at grass root problems (that may not be very popular research areas but are high on social benefits) or high impact work in a scientific journal. Scholars of such fields should be recognised through other laurels and awards.

Another policy change that may ensure a respectable life for senior researchers wanting to continue research in India is to enhance the fold increase of the fellowships between JRF to SRF and SRF to the postdoctoral level (say, around 1.4 to 1.5-fold of their previous level). SRF and postdoctoral researchers are generally in their late 20s or early 30s, a time they typically start or support a family.

Scholars who earn their PhDs in Indian institutions should be rewarded since many JRFs leave Indian PhD programmes to pursue PhDs in foreign labs or institutes. JRF fellowship shouldn’t be a stop-gap arrangement for aspiring graduates of foreign universities. A JRF scholar who continues research in India and gets promoted to SRF should be rewarded with a healthy raise in stipend to pursue research in India. The same logic applies to postdoctoral fellows.

The long-debated issue of brain drain could have a solution in a good postdoctoral fellowship with independent grants. The Chinese initiatives “Thousand Talents Plan” and “Thousand Youth Talents Plan”2are great examples of how to attract scholars to postdoctoral positions through government grants and fellowships and to pursue them to return and serve home institutions. This way, trained and qualified PhD scientists could fuel the nation’s economic and scientific growth and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cry of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan, Jai Vigyaan and Jai Anusandhaan” would sound real.

  1. India by the numbers
  2. China’s plan to recruit talented researchers

(Yogesh Chawla is a PhD from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He can be contacted at yogi1chawla@gmail.com.)

Speak up if you experience intolerance, racism in your lab

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Senior academics must step up and take the lead in discussing intolerance, says Devang Mehta, a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Plant Genomics at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Mehta, who moved to Europe from India as a graduate student, regrets not having talked about such concerns with supervisors during his PhD.

{credit}Pixabay{/credit}

Last month, anti-Asian graffiti was painted in residences on the campus of my PhD alma mater, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, and Asian students’ work was vandalized with racist slogans. That same week brought allegations that a leading astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, had used racist language towards trainees, among other bullying. (The astrophysicist has defended her behaviour, and says her comments were distorted and taken out of context; see news story.)

When blatantly racist incidents occur in our universities, we academics usually prefer not to address them. We leave their handling to university administrators, who tend to deal only with the most serious cases, frequently long after they have happened. In my experience, scientists often do a poor job of recognizing and dealing with racism in our workplaces. In fact, several colleagues I spoke to while writing this article expressed scepticism that racial bias even exists in the often highly international scientific work environment. This blindness to the issue keeps us from addressing racism within the close-knit structures of academic labs.

{credit}devang mehta{/credit}

My own experiences pale in comparison to others’, but are still worth recounting. I came to Europe as a graduate student from India in 2012, just as terrorism and the refugee crisis were sparking a sharp increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric. However, working in incredibly diverse labs, I felt largely insulated.

This changed when a colleague asked me to tell a Muslim colleague off for having an untidy workbench because ‘they’ respond better to male authority. All I could do was stare, dumbstruck. In another instance, when asked about supporting diversity in a meeting with students, a European professor laughingly admitted to not hiring Asian researchers because he found ‘them’ difficult to work with. And I’ve heard many scientists casually dismiss all published papers from labs in certain countries as bad science, in the presence of students from those very countries.

I deeply regret that during my PhD I did not talk about these experiences with my supervisors. By not doing so, I denied them the opportunity to learn from and address my concerns in the manner in which I’m now confident they would have done. Why didn’t I work up the courage to report my concerns? I didn’t want to rock the boat. Like many scientists from ethnic-minority groups, I was an immigrant lacking the social and economic safety nets that citizens enjoy. It was so much easier to put my head down and race towards that PhD.

Although official policies such as institutional codes of conduct and instruments of redress for serious offences are essential, individual principal investigators (PIs) also need to model the sort of communication that is lacking today. If the reluctance of junior researchers like me to talk about racism is regrettable, the silence, and hence complicity, of senior faculty members is unconscionable. Scientists, as a community, must practise having tolerant conversations about intolerance, unconscious bias, unfair power structures and a friendlier workplace for everyone. And that just isn’t happening: both the targets of and witnesses to microaggressions worry that they are reading too much into certain actions. Relevant incidents rarely reach the attention of PIs.

The lead must come from the top — from PIs, deans, provosts. The first step could be something as simple as showing a willingness to hear about racism and intolerance from students and employees. I have asked around, and I have not heard of a single instance in which a lab head, of any race or ethnicity, male or female, held a lab meeting or sent a welcome e-mail explicitly recognizing that these are real problems they are willing to discuss. I write publicly about these topics, but I find it hard to even imagine raising racism or inequality with supervisors in face-to-face meetings unless they first signalled an openness to talk about them.

It’s not easy to call out colleagues over racist comments or intolerant behaviour, but we must. For inspiration, I sometimes consider the universal ethical code for scientists devised in 2007 by David King, then the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, which requires high standards of integrity for evidence and society (go.nature.com/2u7ydtd). And guidelines exist for essential conversations, for example those from the Massive Science Consortium, a group of more than 300 young scientists of which I’m a member. One tenet is “assume good intentions and forgive”. Talking about race can lead to people feeling persecuted, fairly or unfairly, and forgiveness is needed to move on from a confrontational or racist incident. (Assuming, of course, that the incident was minor, and apologies were offered.)

Another guideline is “step back and step up”. This asks privileged individuals to make sure they don’t dominate a discussion, and to listen to contributions from minorities and less powerful groups.

Perhaps the most important guideline is “speak and listen from personal experience”. In other words, do not instinctively question the validity of someone else’s experience; this happens so often with women and minorities. It is especially apparent when institutions reflexively defend the accused. It is up to tenured professors to protest and demand more introspection from their employers and employees.

Fundamentally, tackling racism and intolerance in science requires an acknowledgement from us all that it exists. I call on senior scientists to speak up and to invite others to do so.

[This piece was first published as a ‘World View’ article in Nature.] 

Raising a voice against anti-science

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A peacock procreates by crying — there’s no sex involved, a peacock’s teardrops impregnate the peahen.

Panchagavya — a concoction of cow dung, cow urine, milk, curd and clarified butter (ghee) — has medical benefits.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is scientifically wrong — no one has ever seen a man turn into an ape.

Which of these sounds the most preposterous? (The last one questioning Darwin’s theory, by the way, was delivered yesterday by a minister in India’s Union cabinet.)

For a billion plus population in the world’s largest democracy, such embarrassing statements by people in positions of power have become alarmingly regular. So regular that some brush them aside with a smirk, some make a joke of them on Twitter and some rage over them during dinner table conversations. But here’s the scary bit: many — who either hero worship these people or are blinded or silenced by their stature — believe such random facepalm-worthy comments. And many, who should protest, stay quiet.

This promulgation of unverified ‘facts’ doesn’t even qualify as pseudoscience [dictionary meaning: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method]. This is plain anti-science [dictionary meaning:  a set or system of attitudes and beliefs that are opposed to or reject science and scientific methods and principles].

Such statements by India’s politicians and people in powerful offices are bringing to a naught the scientific progress that this country is making in bits and pieces, with ambitions of becoming a science superpower.

Sample some more:

The elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha proves Indians practiced cosmetic surgery way before it is mentioned in medical texts.

or

Genetic science was present during the Mahabharata. That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.

India March for Science

These are scary times for those who practice science in this country. An immediate letter of protest by India’s scientific community has challenged the minister’s anti-science blabber saying: “Statements such as ‘humans did / did not evolve from monkeys’ is an overly simplistic and misleading representation of evolution. There is plentiful and undeniable scientific evidence to the fact that humans and the other great apes and monkeys had a common ancestor.” The letter is in the right direction. So was ‘India March for Science‘ in 2017, though the country’s scientists had joined the global call belatedly.

Scotching pseudoscience and irrational thoughts is at one level, tackling the menace on a case-by-case basis with a letter of protest here or a march of solidarity there. But eradicating anti-science may need a deeper combing operation where scientists, science communicators and India’s science administration come together to make a bigger noise, a bigger dent.

Why I marched for science: Debunking myths, promoting rationality

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Following the “March for Science” in 600 cities across the world on 22 April 2017, Indian scientists gave a call for “India March for Science” on the 9 August 2017. On that day, more than 15,000 scientists, science teachers, research scholars, students, and science-loving people came out on the streets of 43 cities and towns of India.

Scientists within India did not join the global protest. Did they miss the boat? Yes, say Vineeta Bal and Aurnab Ghose from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. Along with Satyajit Rath from the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, they joined hundreds of scientists in the ‘India March for Science’ held, albeit belatedly, across the country. Here’s the trio’s guest post on the unique challenges facing India’s science that made the protests timely.

[The views expressed are personal].

The protestors in Pune

The protestors in Pune{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}

There is a need to focus attention on the current trajectory of scientific pursuits in India – we need rationality and scientific temper in our society, and for that, we need the scientists of today and tomorrow.

The process of rational thinking needs to be inculcated early in life by encouraging young children to ask questions, by providing avenues for finding logical answers, by discouraging blind faith and acts associated with the perpetuation of blind faith. In many of these contexts, formal education can help. Hence there is a clear need to develop curricula which encourage curiosity and experiment-driven learning and discourage faith-driven irrational approaches and unquestioning attitude to learning.

One of the major demands during our ‘India March for Science’ was to increase the budget on education and spend it on developing young minds to think rationally and critically. While the exact proportion of GDP that should be spent on education can be debated, there is no doubt that in India there is a clear need to increase governmental spending on education at all levels.

Another demand during the event was that spending on research in science should be increased. For the last many decades, every successive government has promised to increase allocation for science research for various departments. Departments affiliated to defence research have seen substantial increases in certain years but civilian science research departments have not been as consistently fortunate.

While it is true that in recent years the funds allocated during the budget speech by the Finance Minister of the country appears higher than the previous year and hence can be used to counter the scientists’ arguments that there is no budgetary increase, the larger reality is far less promising. Funding is unpredictable, with even inflation not allowed for in some years, it is seldom available on time, and it is terribly patchily distributed. The Director General of CSIR (the largest network of laboratories in the country) has admitted near bankruptcy, stipends of research personnel are being withheld or delayed; there is thus little doubt that the funding for civilian scientific research in India is sub-optimal.

Bengaluru MarchScience research is a continuous, often long-term, process. It can’t start and stop arbitrarily. Hence there has to be an equivalence between the sustainability of efforts and sustainability of the associated funding. Also, just like in science education, rationality should be the mainstay of any science research. For this to be practised, development of reasonable models based on available data, refinement and testing of these models and evidence-based modification or rejection of the models should be the basis of scientific efforts and policy.

Funding for research where the outcome appears to be already defined is undesirable – a case in point is the Scientific Validation and Research on Panchgavya (SVAROP) project. The research aims to prove the usefulness of panchgavya, a concoction of five cow products (dung, urine, milk, curd and ghee) used in traditional Indian rituals. The Indian Science Congress, a major annual scientific meeting in the country, has also been used as a platform to promote pseudoscience. Such efforts undermine the basic tenets of science where research questions are asked with a hypothesis in mind and the knowledge gained is likely to support or refute the hypothesis. Instead, these regressive efforts foster superstition in society by pretending that pseudoscience is ‘science’.

The Indian march

At least 15000 people participated in the Indian march in several cities. About 700 people participated in the Pune march. Besides demonstrating solidarity with the global ‘March for Science’, the Indian students, teachers and researchers stressed on inculcating rational thinking in the society. The relevance of rationality in society was highlighted by the explicit and public reference to the work done over many decades in Maharashtra by the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, an intellectual who was murdered for his stance against superstition.

India March for Science

{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}

August 9 was chosen for its historic significance as the day of the launch of the Quit India movement against erstwhile British rulers, with an implicit corollary of self-empowerment in making societal decisions. It is World Indigenous Peoples’ Day, underlining the most underprivileged sections of society in need of the empowering potential of science. It’s also Nagasaki Day, which reminds us that science disconnected with society can be used for horrific ends. Together, these reminders make the urgent point underlined by the march for science, that science must be recommitted and reconnected to society, and that society must rediscover the progressive potential of science and value it appropriately as an open-minded, fearless enquiry into causes.

We marched despite direct orders prohibiting some scientists from participating in the ‘March for Science’ and many refraining from joining due to perceived threats to their jobs and possible harassment. The practitioners of science who hit the streets were demanding freedom of speech to express their concerns, freedom for dissent and discussion, assurance of steady supply of funds for pursuing scientific research, provision of more funds for education for all.

In a democratic country such as India, these are basic demands to make. If a country’s scientific community need to take to the streets for such basics, there is serious need for introspection.

Physicist Soumitro Banerjee from the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research Kolkata, who joined the march in India’s capital Delhi, talks about the policy changes that scientists want to see in the wake of the march.

The march in Kolkata

The march in Kolkata

I marched for science in New Delhi because the funding support for scientific research in India is sorely inadequate, having remained stagnant in the range 0.8%-0.9% of India’s GDP for far too long. Other countries with similar aspirations have provided financial support for science exceeding 3% of GDP. It is not difficult to imagine the crisis facing most Indian scientific institutions because of paucity of funds.

The education system that supplies the scientific manpower is also in bad shape. The public school system, where a majority of Indian children get their education, is deplorable. Many schools are without proper buildings, toilets, and playgrounds, have overcrowded classrooms, face acute shortage of teachers and are without laboratory facilities. As a result, a vast majority of children are deprived of the opportunity of being a part of the scientific manpower of this country.

The college and university system is also reeling under acute shortage of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for research.

The situation is crying out for urgent redressal, and the march demanded allocation of 3% of GDP for R&D and 10% of GDP for education.

A bigger area of concern is that in recent times attempts to spread unscientific beliefs and superstition are on the rise. Sometimes, unscientific ideas lacking in evidence are being propagated as science, patronised by persons in high positions. Untested personal beliefs of educational administrators and textbook writers are infiltrating the education system, and mythology is being taught as history.

This is vitiating the cultural atmosphere of the country. There is an article in the Indian Constitution (Article 51A) that demands every Indian citizen to develop a scientific temper, humanism and spirit of inquiry, and the current cultural atmosphere runs counter to that. The march demanded that the government uphold this provision of the Constitution.

 

Suggested links:

Thousands across India march in support of science

What happened at March for Science events around the world

India’s ‘yoga ministry’ stirs doubts among scientists

Science writing across the world

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Nature India intern Kate Telma from the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reflects on a summer of reporting science in India.

Kate Telma

Kate Telma{credit}Sonia Sharma{/credit}

As I made plans to join Nature India this summer, I was met with two questions from fellow students, professors, and friends: Will you be able to get my research into Nature?,  followed closely by, Why India?

Over the course of my science writing internship at Nature India, I haven’t been able to fast-track any of my PhD-pursuing friends’ research – I warned them about this before I left Cambridge. But my answer to the second question is still evolving, and only began to crystalise when I started asking others — mostly Indian scientists — why they had chosen India.

Many Indian researchers train abroad at some point in their careers (Indigenus has a whole series interviewing Indian postdocs abroad, ‘Away from home’), and need to make a big decision at the end of their stint away. I asked myself related questions about interning overseas: did I stay in the U.S. and perfect the science writing skills I had learned during my programme, or should I venture away to see how people in other countries communicate science? How far is too far?

One of the scientists I interviewed, Arun Shukla, said the main reason he chose to return and establish his lab in Kanpur was open space. He could be the first to accomplish challenging crystallography experiments in India, but from Europe or the US, he would be only one of a crowd. In many ways, this has also been true in my experience as a science writer in India. Instead of competing with news interns and writers at myriad online science and general publications to break the news of a well-publicised study, I am often the first person to contact scientists about their recent work, even when the embargo was lifted a week ago. Many researchers seem pleasantly surprised by the attention.

This unfamiliarity with the media has played out in amusing ways. While covering one new study, I sent a manuscript version of it to another scientist in the field, requesting his comment on it for my news article. When I called him the next day, he asked what sort of journal I was hoping to publish in, and offered some advice for improving the figures — thinking, perhaps, that I was a researcher hoping for some pre-submission peer review of my original research.

Many of even the largest universities in India don’t have a formal press or communications office, making news of scientific breakthroughs less available to the public. As a reporter, it often takes more effort to find a study by Indian scientists, or to identify a local expert willing to give outside comment. The methods I learned in graduate school — cultivate relationships with press officers, check embargo sites, interview a graduate student or a postdoc, who might have more time to sit down and really explain the research — frequently don’t suffice.

In my experience, the “open space” that Shukla seeks poses another challenge: there simply aren’t scientists in the field who were not also involved with the study, at least in India. For a story about a population genetics study, I wanted to get the perspective of a genetic counsellor who might have actually interacted with the type of patients in question. When I finally located one, he told me his training programme was still so new, there were an estimated 50 licensed genetic counsellors for a country of more than a billion. His time is in high demand, but he was happy to chat.

Enthusiasm for science writing and communication is growing faster than anything I’ve observed in the U.S. While covering an event at the Department of Biotechnology, or visiting the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in Faridabad, I was invited to give talks to scientists and other writers about “how science writing should be done,” and “how scientists can best communicate.” Protests that I am just a student, and not an authority, go unheard.

KT

The summer has been an exciting time for science in India. In my first couple of weeks in Delhi, India became an associate member of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, a huge step forward for accessing cutting edge x-ray crystallography resources. In July, fifteen years of genomics data revealed that several large people groups in South Asia with populations of more than a million arose from just handfuls of ancestors, putting them at risk for population-specific genetic disorders. Clinicians and researchers are turning to both traditional turmeric and an Indian-made leprosy vaccine to fight tuberculosis infections. Resistance — both antibiotic resistance in poultry farms, and quests to track down drug resistant malaria strains — is never far from headlines. As the summer comes to a close, the community has been saddened by the deaths of several of the country’s leading scientists, in fields as far-ranging as molecular biology to space and science popularisation.

The milieu of passionate scientists waiting to share their discoveries presents a world of possibility for aspiring science writers. For me, it’s been more important than ever to write clearly for an audience who might not get news of the latest research anywhere else.

Women scientists on what plagues their growth

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Women in Science

On Women’s Day this March 8, when social media was going berserk with messages celebrating the ‘beauty, grace and sacrifice’ of women, a bunch of feisty women scientists were talking shop at the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in the heart of Delhi.

The usual discussions on what comes in the way of women’s performance — childcare responsibilities, gender-based discrimination at workplace and sexual harassment — was set apart with something remarkable — a gentle-intrepid spirit that’s not difficult to come by these days in many Indian labs and scientific institutions.

Yes, the numbers do not match up to that spirit. Yes, the glass ceiling sadly exists. And yes, this country does not enjoy a particularly enviable position as far as security and opportunities for women are concerned. But listening to Indian women leaders in science and technology at a seminar put together by India government’s science popularisation unit Vigyan Prasar and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) gave a sense that there’s more to it than just those concerns. Fundamental issues of ‘mindset’ — that socio-cultural demon — need to be slayed before we can even think of levelling the playing field.

For starters, two days of brainstorming over the status of women in science resulted in some concrete suggestions. Some of these recommendations should certainly draw the attention of our science administrators and policy makers.

  • Scientists’ workplaces are functional 24X7. It’s essential to keep women’s needs in mind — flexi-timings, flexi-space, creche, daycare and campus housing — these must be made mandatory, not optional.
  • Flexi-enrolment in science courses for women, given they have important personal milestones such as marriage and childbirth to take care of.
  • Increase in representation of women in government S&T programmes, in selection committees and in top jobs.
  • Gender sensitive text books; scientific publications that address gender inequalities.
  • Increase in funding so that more women can avail of government (DBT, DST and UGC) schemes; also mid-career and gap-period skill upgradation; travel funds to attend courses/training/conferences; and mentoring/funding support for women-led start-ups and entrepreneurship.
  • A gender-conscious science policy that allows women to propel and be part of national growth
  • Media advocacy that helps make science the preferred choice of women by celebrating the success stories of women scientists and science entrepreneurs/communicators — in short, making new role models.

And this, as one can imagine, is just a snapshot of what transpired.

Vineeta Bal, a scientist at the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and a member of India’s task force for women in science, earlier discussed at length  in this commentary for Nature India what India’s women scientists need and why. Some years back, on Women’s Day again, the government had rolled out some schemes for women scientists based on recommendations of a panel headed by renowned nutritionist Mahtab Bamji. The panel had found that women scientists faced discrimination, sexual harassment and other problems besides their poor representation in committees and science faculties.

A study by UNESCO outlining the involvement of women in science had some stark figures for India. The Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS) said 44% of bachelor students are female while 41% get till the doctoral level. What happens beyond that has not been chronicled for India, though there are figures from many other countries in the dataset. UIS put together an interactive infographic on women in science to highlight the global gender gap in higher education and scientific research. They aptly call it the “leaky pipeline”.

A Nature special issue on Women is Science also exposed the dismaying extent to which sexism still exists in science and introspected on why progress in this area has stalled.

The recommendations of this national seminar by Vigyan Prasar and DBT are a fresh reiteration of what women scientists in this country and elsewhere have long been seeking.

Now, does it need a Women’s Day to herald policy changes that can arrest this enormous waste of human talent?

Does language limit scientific expression?

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Scientific papers

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This is a guest blogpost by Aya Nader.

More evidence is confirming that the choice of language used in scientific literature can influence access to it, and how visible its authors are – including in the Arab world.

Language can limit the transfer of knowledge for one, concludes a study that looked into the prevalence of scientific literature written in local languages. The study, published in PLOS Biology, confirmed some sentiments that many researchers across the Arab world already have.

Over one third of conservation-related scientific documents are written in non-English languages, and a large proportion of local researchers interviewed in the study identified languages as a barrier to accessing knowledge. “I was expecting to see these results, as that was the primary motivation to conduct this work,” says Tatsuya Amano, corresponding author.

Amano says that gaps in information are formed when local scientists either do not get exposed or turn away from publishing in their original language. What surprised the researcher was that over one third of non-English literature reviewed in the study provided neither the title nor the abstract in English, so it’s essentially “invisible to international communities”.

The study might explain why Arab scientists are not as visible, in terms of science research, to international peers, he opines.

“Perhaps only 25% of the global population has some understanding of English and we cannot limit science to just a fraction of the world,” says Steve Griffiths, vice president for research at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. According to him, having scientific knowledge being somewhat confined to the English language can present a problem when collecting scientific data or disseminating information.

“While language is probably not the driving force behind the lag in scientific visibility of Arab scientists, it certainly can hinder progress,” Griffiths says. Different factors could be causing the lag, he says, which include that the region has only been recently making strides in establishing top-tier research universities and institutes. As well, regional equivalents of supportive bodies like the US National Science Foundation or the US National Institutes of Health are absent.

One of the barriers could be the language itself. A few argue that Arabic, because of the way it’s structured, cannot be adopted as a language of science. “I personally am fluent in English and have studied Arabic for some time and clearly see the translation challenges for technical information,” says Griffiths.

On one hand, English is the universal language of science. On the other, having science available in the local language can enlighten field practitioners and local policy makers.

“The availability of scientific information in relevant non-English languages is a key to the use of science in policy making in countries where English is not widely spoken,” comments Amano. It’s one factor contributing to the divide between science and public policy. “I imagine that extremely busy policy makers would prefer just using easily-accessible information in their own languages, instead of trying to understand English-written papers.”

Poor English skills are observed in many MENA countries and particularly within the government sectors, which limits the uptake of scientific information, Griffiths highlights.

In order to compile non-English scientific knowledge effectively and enhance publishing of new and existing knowledge that is otherwise available only in English, Griffiths suggests launching regional initiatives modeled after the MIT Global System for Sustainable Development. The networking hub, specialized in sustainable development, was created to give researchers that speak English, Arabic, Chinese and Spanish seamless access to its science content.

Another approach is to encourage individual researchers to translate their work, or provide lay summaries of their work in different languages.

There’s also hope in artificial intelligence (AI) for natural language processing (NLP). “Major industry players like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are deeply engaged in AI NLP for commercial reasons, and over time the outcomes will benefit the scientific community,” Griffiths suggests.

The Throes of AIDS

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Aids and drug testing equipment. Syringe. Paperwork. Graph. Blood. Coloured liquid. Sample. Medical research. Measurements. Charts. Cure. Treatment. Thermometer. Instruments.

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As scientists, press, leaders and activists meet at the 21st International AIDS conference in Durban, the Middle East and North Africa region remains embroiled in its own fight against HIV/AIDS.

The odds are stacked against this region, solidly among those groups where infections are increasing – an issue that the conference at Durban is expected to mount concerns about, among others. In addition to discussing the state of the epidemic worldwide, and in high-risk areas, the conference will address the fact that HIV/AIDS is plateauing or peaking in several countries, plus the level of jeopardy this entails.

In this region, 80% of people living with HIV/AIDS are not aware they’re carrying the virus, 85% of those in progressive stages of infection are not receiving treatments and deaths due to AIDS have increased 176%, according to reports from UNAIDS and WHO. There are not enough national strategic plans to tackle the problem and access to life-saving medications remains limited.

Stigma is partly to blame, according to Navid Madani, senior scientist in the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Globally, growing resistance to the antiretroviral drugs used against HIV is the most serious issue facing plans to end the endemic, according to the WHO’s opening statement to Durban’s conference this morning.

Finding preventive measures and a vaccine-antiviral combination that might bring us closer to a cure are underway. In fact only this week, a new study in Science provides insights into the workings of new HIV drugs and into how the virus becomes resistant. Scientists can use these to scrutinize structures insides irregular viruses like HIV to understand the molecular underpinnings of the virus in order to come up with new drug designs.

But finding new drugs is an expensive affair, as meanwhile funding for HIV has been dropping.

Back in the Middle East and North Africa, the extent of the HIV epidemic is undeniable, and governments – some reluctantly and others readily – are beginning to understand there’s a problem in need of curbing.

Just as pivotal to halting the spread is the culture of HIV-related practices, the shame surrounding the virus, the inequality cited by many in terms of medication access and the outdated fears about the prognosis for those infected. The burden falls on scientists, policymakers, healthcare workers and even at-risk communities to try and change the status quo.