PSEUDO-SCIENCE MUST NOT FIGURE IN INDIAN SCIENCE CONGRESS
Vikrant Dadawala
A scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California has launched an online petition demanding that a lecture on ‘Ancient Indian Aviation Technology’ to be delivered at the 102nd Indian Science Congress in Mumbai in January be cancelled as it brings into question the “integrity of the scientific process”.
Dr Ram Prasad Gandhiraman’s petition, already signed by 220 scientists and academicians around the world, places its opposition to the lecture in the larger context of the increasing attempts in India to mix mythology with science, and cites Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling Lord Ganesha a product of ancient India’s unparalleled knowledge of plastic surgery as an example.
Mumbai Mirror was first to report how the organisers of the 102nd Indian Science Congress, to be held between January 3 and 7 at Mumbai University’s Kalina campus, had slipped in Vedic mythology about aviation into the Science Congress’ schedule, which is otherwise packed with talks on ribosomes, resistance to antibiotics and the origin of life, and discourses on controlling the cell cycle, all delivered by some of the finest scientific minds, including six Nobel laureates.
The lecture on the ‘Ancient Indian Aviation Technology’ is to be delivered by Captain Anand J Bodas and Ameya Jadhav.
While speaking to Mumbai Mirror for the previous report, Bodas had claimed that the “ancient Indian aeroplane travelled from one country to another, from one continent to another, and from one planet to another.” He also asserted that in those days aeroplanes “could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward.”
Dr Gandhiraman’s petition says that it is “appalling” that such a prestigious science conference is providing a platform to pseudo-science talk. “We as scientific community should be seriously concerned about the infiltration of pseudo-science in science curricula with backing of influential political parties. Giving a scientific platform for a pseudo-science talk is worse than a systematic attack that has been carried out by politically powerful pseudo-science propagandists in the recent past. If we scientists remain passive, we are betraying not only the science, but also our children,” the petition says.
Communicating with Mumbai Mirror over the internet on Wednesday, Dr. Gandhiraman, who has previously been a research scientist with America’s Universities Space Research Association and the Dublin City University, Ireland said: “I have emailed the organisers, the chief scientific advisor to PMO, scientific secretary and directors of a few IITs and IISc. I am now trying to contact the Nobel laureates scheduled to attend the Science Congress to let them know that they will be presenting at a conference that promotes pseudo-science.”
Gandhiraman has also been in touch with Nobel Prize winner Prof. Paul Nurse who is due to deliver a talk at the Indian Science Congress and is famous for his strong stance against the distortion of scientific evidence for political or religious ends. Captain Bodas’s source text for his claims on ancient India’s aviation prowess is ‘Vaimanika Prakaranam’, an Indian treatise on aviation, the authorship of which is attributed to the sage Bhardwaj.
A section of scientists, however, emphasise the importance of scientifically scrutinizing all claims about the past.
Prof S M Deshpande, one of the five authors of a study on aviation technologies in Sanskrit texts by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore said while there is no harm in making a presentation on ancient India’s aviation achievements, care must be taken to base the talk on a
correct scientific study. “When we undertook a study of aviation in Sanskrit texts, we were driven by great intellectual curiosity and not by any desire to dismiss it as ‘psuedo-science’.
Prof Deshpande’s study of the Vaimanika Shastra, the text Captain Bodas widely quotes from, had concluded that the text “cannot be dated earlier than 1904” and that the planes described in it are “poor concoctions” and “unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying”.
Prof Gauri Mahulikar, head of MU’s Sanskrit Department and coordinator for the session, said that this was the first time that the Indian Science Congress had held a symposium on ancient Indian science viewed through Sanskrit literature. “If we had chosen Sanskrit professors to talk about the references to aviation technology in Sanskrit literature, which includes information on how to make planes, the dress code and diet of pilots, the seven types of fuel used, people would have dismissed us, but Captain Bodas is himself a pilot, and his co-presenter, Ameya Jadhav, holds an MTech degree besides an MA in Sanskrit.”
(Mumbai Mirror, Dec 31, 2014)
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