
India scientists dismiss Einstein theories - ZeljkoS
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46778879
======
srean
No wiring have been found to date in excavations of Indian sites. Irrefutable
proof that they had wireless karmic communication.

These are the folks who have been running our country for the past 5 years.
The other party, congress, is a party of sycophants trying to upstage each
other by their degree of sycophancy toward their party president that
typically has come from a single family. In the current govt, its the
"scientists" who try to out sycophant the other in legitimizing the current
govt's beliefs to win favors. It helps them that a significant part of the
population believes in that shit.

So here we are, caught betweent a rock and a hard place.

~~~
vinni2
“It helps them that a significant part of the population believes in that
shit.”

An Indian past colleague of mine who is highly educated with a PhD in CS from
a western country truly believed in the conspiracy theory that Indian gods
were aliens and space travel was common during those days. It was horrifying
to know that such highly educated scientist believed in such unsubstantiated
conspiracy theory.

The amount of misinformation that spreads in India because of WhatsApp is
truly scary and people believe it because “it was on WhatsApp”

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ankushnarula
My father (not a scientist, but a successful businessman) has been making such
claims about ancient Hindu texts for the last 40 years. I've always wondered
how otherwise educated people succumb to such obvious metaphorical myths.
Perhaps the current trend is partly cultural insecurity but mostly
scientific/epistemic illiteracy.

~~~
srean
Part of the reason is that the 'humanism' movement that was instrumental in
separating the church from the state in Europe during Renaissance was not
uniformly replicated in India. It did happen in pockets, Bengal, Maharashtra
were some of these pockets but this phenomena was not uniformly distributed.

Gandhi, for instance, believed that nothing ever good came out of the European
civilization and its ideas. If you take such a stance you cant learn from
them. His views were in stark contrast to, say, Tagore who had no problems in
acknowledging the good parts while attacking the bad. What amuses me is that
that banning of the practice of sati - burning of widows on the stake -- was
strongly influenced by Muslim literature from Muslim golden age, the Mutazils
to be precise. RamMohan Roy the chief figure in getting the practice abolished
was a scholar of Persian literature and of course Mutazil literature. Its
amusing because Islam is the current poster child of everything retrogressive.

Back to Renaissance, had Europe not retrogressed Renaissance would not have
been necessary. The same holds for India.

BTW I am in admiration of the fact that you can talk about something that's
this close to home.

My father, a scientist was heading a governmental body at the time of the
previous BJP government headed by Vajpayee. He run a foul of them. He was
being coerced in to scientifically endorsing that artifacts from ayodhya,
bricks, to be particular, were from Ram's times. He refused to do so as those
bricks indicated quite something else. It was a very trying time for our
family. I have my full sympathies and respect for those who stand up against a
corrupt government be it intellectual corruption or corruption of some other
kind. I have immense respect for my father because given what he was going
through I am not sure I would have made the same choices that he made. I would
like to believe that I would have been as honest and upright but since I was
not in the center of that harrasment I sincerely dont know what trade offs I
would have made. This is the first time I have ever spoken about this to
anyone.

------
bakul
Misleading headline by BBC. The very first sentence in the article is this:
"Indian scientists have hit out at speakers at a major science conference for
making irrational claims."

~~~
simonh
A major science conference at which other Indian scientists absolutely
repudiated Newton and Einstein, and pushed Von Daniken style theories about
ancient Vedic aircraft and stem cell technology.

So clearly there are scientists in India who are fighting the good fight for
scientific rigor and accountability, but this is in the context of ruling
party politicians making comments pushing these sorts of crackpot theories in
support of a nationalist glorification agenda. There is currently plenty of
reason to worry about the politicization of science in India.

~~~
bakul
I don’t consider these folks scientists.

~~~
srean
What you consider or dont is irrelevant. They are speaking from a premier
platform that represents the country's scientific progress.

Yes there are flat-earthers in the US, but they dont speak from the podium of
the most premier scientific platform of their country. Trump himself is
another matter, in fact there are some parallels between Modi and Trump.

~~~
bakul
Of course this corruption of a science conference is a serious concern but
what BBC is doing with its misleading headline is to painting all “India”
scientists with a broad brush when they (as well as HN readers) should be
supporting the real scientists who are aghast at what is going on.

There are indeed lots of parallels between the two men.

~~~
srean
Completely agree about BBC's bias. Hopefully articles such as these will
create enough outrage and some good will come out of it. I doubt it though.

Its important to expose these guys and make people uncomfortable enough, have
their ego hurt enough so that they feel compelled to respond. So in a
backhanded way BBC is doing a good thing.

There is also the question of how the headline is read. Is it read as 'all
Indian' scientists or Some whose nationality happen to be Indian. Given that
its being broadcast from a forum called the "Indian Science Congress" I cannot
honestly complain because that platform is intended to speak for India and its
scientists.

~~~
simonh
Sp you agree about the BBCs bias, but you also can't honestly complain. I do
agree with your point that it's important to expose this issue and I think the
BBC did a good job here. Headlines are necessarily short and the very first
sentence in the article makes it perfectly clear there is disagreement on this
among scientists in India and there are scientists with integrity fighting the
good fight for science. In fact the headline and first sentence sum up the
whole issue very succinctly.

~~~
bakul
"In fact the headline and first sentence sum up the whole issue very
succinctly."

Surely you jest.

An April, 2016 academic study of bit.ly links shared on Twitter to BBC, CNN,
Fox News, New York Times and Huffington Post articles found that 59 percent of
the links were never clicked. And another study of push-through news alerts to
mobile phones found that “People click on the alert about half the time.”

Source: [https://honestreporting.com/tag/misleading-
headlines/](https://honestreporting.com/tag/misleading-headlines/)

What this means is most people only read the headline and not even the first
line.

------
known
The Arabic countries led by the Muslims were the most advanced
scientists/engineers in the world, until they let the religious crazies take
over. Just saying Indian ...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_science_and_engine...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_science_and_engineering_in_the_Islamic_world)

------
vinilg
Sanskrit being mother of most modern languages, including European. There must
be a scientific reason why Sanskrit was declared the best language for
Computers by NASA. Dwarika cities were discovered intact under seabed proving
Indian civilisation is the oldest in the world and was far ahead even
12,000-32,000 years ago. It is clear that there is science in many rituals of
Karama based Hindu Vedas, rituals, food, Yoga etc. It is not surprising the
claim Indian scientists are making. On the other hand, in a Mahabharata speak,
Britain would be called a land of daemons on the basis of the murder, loot,
suppression and hijacking of cultures of its colonies. British would like
world to believe that sun actually shines out of their backside.

------
cyberjunkie
Of course, they were the first to discover and invent. They just lost all of
the learnings somewhere in the past, presumably to a server crash.

~~~
drieddust
Did you read anything before making the claim?

> "We don't subscribe to their views and distance ourselves from their
> comments. This is unfortunate," Premendu P Mathur, general secretary of
> Indian Scientific Congress Association, told AFP news agency.

BBC always have an agenda when it comes to India.

~~~
srean
> BBC always have an agenda when it comes to India.

Yes they do but its not that they are lying here. These are the ideas that are
being spread from a premier platform.

BTW I am sure cyberjunkie was being sarcastic.

~~~
drieddust
Agreed but there was no need for such a provocative and misleading headline.

~~~
timothevs
Well, if the shoe fits...

