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Science as a Candle in the Dark

I grew up in rural Kerala reading each morning ‘Mathrubhumi’-a Malayalam newspaper. Over those years, I remember seeing small box advertisements on top-corners of the front page; every day I would see different incarnations of similar ads. The ads would read like “scientifically prepared magic amulets to ward off evil spirits” and so on. Even after two full decades, similar ads can still be found in Mathrubhumi and other newspapers of Kerala (and presumably other states as well). The question here is straight forward, what is science? Simply put, science is an evidence-based pursuit of knowledge discovery. Let us consider the example of the previous advertisement, the amulet. The question is how effective the amulet is to ward off evil spirits. Before answering this issue, one has to ascertain the validity of a thing called ‘evil spirit’. Of course, this question evades a fundamental principle in science known as ‘falsifiability’, put forth first by the British philosopher of s...
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What construes pseudoscience?

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This comment is in response to “ The march from yesterdays ” by Sundar Sarukkai, published on 10 th August 2017. I am surprised to read a comment from a philosopher colleague that suffer from the logical fallacy of ad ignorantiam in its entirety, that too in the same newspaper issue with an excellent politics article full of profound scientific insights from a non-scientist colleague ( When the Paradigm Shifts , Happymon Jacob). The ignorance stems in part from the author’s poor understanding of what construes the science and how it is different from non-science, erroneous science and pseudoscience- three totally unrelated concepts. Non-scientific disciplines like history, sociology, art, literature and so on are of course not pseudoscientific or erroneous science, and the author’s such a claim suffers from a logical fallacy known universally as ‘false dichotomy’. I am a scientist, and I also work on linguistics and evolutionary socio-politics, I have authored an English fictio...
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My experience with IndusInd Platinum Select Credit Card

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A few months ago I visited local branch of IndusInd (Bathinda) for a credit card and the manager explained that it cost Rs. 3500 as a joining fee and nothing else; so I applied on the same day (primarily as an online payment mechanism for forthcoming overseas trip). Manager said it comes with complimentary Jet Airways ticket, but as I presumed, the so called "ticket" is a voucher code for Rs 1500 discount on the base fare. Base fare is normally Rs. 1 for domestic airlines in India (fuel surcharge comes almost 95% of the total fare); so in order to get that Rs. 1500, you gotta purchase 1500 airtickets! Sites like www.yatra.com have been offering this sort of deceptive tactics for such a long time! I received the kit with credit card in couple of months and I spent sometime to read "Most important terms and conditions" booklet (I am always alert with this sort of nondescript documents, easy to spot with its low font size, like EULA/Terms and Conditions of Mutua...
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