आईचं खरं की माझं ?

मी शाळा सोडायला निघालो होतो. इयत्ता नववी किंवा दहावी असेल. मला जे शिकावंसं वाटतं ते या शिक्षणात मला मिळत नाही. मग मी का शिकावं असा माझा प्रश्न होता. मला नक्की काय करायचंय किंवा काय शिकायचंय याची मला फार स्पष्ट कल्पना होती असं नाही. पण जे शिकतोय आणि जो अभ्यास करायला लागतोय  त्याचा मला नक्की काय उपयोग असा प्रश्न नक्कीच स्पष्ट होता. बरं शिकून नोकरीच करायची तर मला काही फार पगाराची अपेक्षा नव्हती. प्यूनची नोकरी सुद्धा मला चालेल. नोकरीचे तास पाट्या टाकल्यावर बाकीचा वेळ मला जे मनापासून करावंसं वाटतं ते करण्यात घालवता येईल. मला तत्वज्ञान किंवा असं काहीतरी शिकण्यात रस होता, आणि त्याला कशाला डिग्री बिग्री लागते. तुकाराम कुठे पीएचडी होते? असं काहींसं माझं गणित होतं.

तो काळ कानफटात ठेऊन गधड्या आपली अक्कल चालवू नकोस, गप गुमान अभ्यास कर असं म्हणणं चूक मानणारा नक्कीच नव्हता. नवीन वारे वाहायला लागले होते थोडे थोडे, पण अजून तो मुख्य प्रवाह म्हणा मुख्य फॅशन म्हणा झाला नव्हता. त्यामुळे मला कानफटात खावी लागेल याची माझी एकीकडे तयारी होती. पण आईनी मला वेगळ्या तऱ्हेनी समजावलं.

“हे बघ, या शिक्षणात काही अर्थ नाही हे मला मान्य आहे. पण तू सोडून दिल्यानी त्यात काही फरक पडणार आहे का? शिक्षणव्यवस्था बदलणार आहे का? स्वतःसाठी पळवाट शोधू नकोस. शिकून एवढा मोठा हो कि तुझ्या शब्दाला किंमत येईल. मग ही व्यवस्थाच बदल. तुझ्यासारखी मुलं पुढच्या पिढीतही असतील. त्यांना खरोखर मनापासून शिकता येईल असं त्या व्यवस्थेत काहीतरी मिळेल असं पहा.”

हे मला काही फार पटलं होतं असं नाही. पण काय ते असो, प्रत्यक्षात मी शिक्षण सोडलं नाही एवढं खरं. रडत खडत का होईना, शाळा कॉलेजमधे गेलो. आदर्श विद्यार्थी वगैरे झालो नाही पण शिकलो. मग शिकवायला आवडतं म्हणून शिक्षक झालो. तेंव्हा ते फार अवघड नव्हतं. नशिबाचीही साथ होती. त्यामुळे एमेस्सी झाल्या झाल्या लेक्चरर होता आलं. पुढे पीएचडी पण झालो. ते ही भारतातल्या अव्वल संस्थेमधून. मग विभाग-प्रमुख, ही समिती, ती समिती, मोठ्या प्रतिष्ठित संस्थेत प्रोफेसर हे सगळं झालं. पण माझ्या मनातलं शिक्षणाचं चित्र चाकोरीतल्यापेक्षा वेगळंच राहिलं. ते आणखी विकसित होत गेलं. मी माझं स्वातंत्र्य घेऊन, कधी व्यवस्थेशी भांडून, मला जसं शिकवायचं होतं तसच शिकवत गेलो. जे प्रयोग करावेसे वाटले ते करत गेलो. जेंव्हा त्यासाठी भांडावं लागलं तेंव्हा भांडत गेलो. काही अंशी तरी  शिक्षक संशोधक म्हणून नाव झालं.

मग औपचरिक रित्या निवृत्तही झालो, म्हणजे चार वर्ष आधीच निवृत्ती घेतली. त्याहून स्पष्ट शब्दात म्हणजे भांडून संस्था सोडली. काम थांबलं नाही. पण दहावीत मला शाळा सोडून जे स्वतंत्रपणे काहीतरी करायचं होतं ते आता करतो आहे. आणि आता हा प्रश्न विचारतो आहे की आईच्या म्हणण्याप्रमाणे काही झालं की नाही झालं? की माझंच म्हणणं खरं ठरलं? उत्तराचे अनेक पदर आहेत, सगळेच्या सगळे मला कळले असतील असंही नाही. पण मला जे चित्र दिसतं ते असं.

एक तर कुठल्याही पातळीवर व्यवस्था बदलली नाही. अधिक चांगली होणं सोडाच, शिक्षणाची अवस्था घसरतच चालली आहे. आणि मी बघत बसण्याखेरीज काहीच करू शकलो नाही. या समितीवर, त्या समितीवर असतानाही नाही आणि आता तर नाहीच नाही. इतरांच्या विरोधासह जे काही बदल मी आग्रहाने करून घेतले ते सगळे माझ्या नंतर पुन्हा मूळ पदालाच नाही तर त्याहूनही वाईट अवस्थेला गेले. काही बाबतीत वर वर पाहता मला जे हवं होतं ते व्यवस्थेनी स्वीकारलेलं दिसतं, पण ते दिखाव्यापुरतंच. आतून पोकळ.

उदाहरणार्थ मुलांनी स्वतःचे प्रश्न विचारावेत, आधीच्या समजुतींना आव्हाने द्यावीत, नवीन कल्पना लढवाव्यात, शक्य तिथे मनातल्या कल्पना साकार करून पाहाव्यात यासाठी मी बरेच प्रयत्न केले. त्यातून काहीबाही घडलं सुद्धा. विज्ञानातील अनेक अंधश्रद्धा उघडकीला आल्या, छोटी मोठी नवीन तत्वे सापडली, त्यातून किमान काही विद्यार्थ्यांची मानसिकता घडण्याला हातभार लागला. अनेक पेपर पब्लिश झाले. त्याचा त्या त्या विद्यार्थ्यांची करिअर घडायला फायदा झाला. पण याचे काही दीर्घकालीन चांगले परिणाम झाले की नाही ते सांगता येत नाही. माझे जे विद्यार्थी संशोधन क्षेत्रात शिरले ते बहुतेक त्यातल्या मुख्य प्रवाहापुढे शरणागती पत्करून. मला अपेक्षित बंडखोरी त्यांच्यात पुढे फारशी दिसली नाही. सुरुवातीला आमच्या पदवीपूर्व वर्षातल्या विद्यार्थ्यांनी आणि प्राध्यापकांनी आपल्या नवीन संकल्पना, नवीन प्रश्न घेऊन पेपर पब्लिश केले  तेंव्हा त्याला काही एक वेगळं मूल्य होतं. आता शिक्षण संस्थांनी पेपर पब्लिश करावेत याचे सोपे फोर्म्युले निघालेत. त्यात काही नाविन्य, काही ओरीजिनॅलिटी, किमान प्रामाणिकपणा असो नसो. नावावर पेपर लागतो. त्यासाठी खोटा डेटा, प्रत्यक्षात न केलेले प्रयोग, वांग्मयचौर्य अशा गोष्टी सर्रास घडू लागल्या आहेत. असे मार्ग वापरून ज्या यशाचा आभास निर्माण करतात अशाच संस्था पुढे येतात. पैसे कमावतात. म्हणजे कुठेतरी मीच सुरु केलेल्या प्रथेचं संपूर्ण विकृतीकरण होऊन त्यावर ढोल बडवणे चालू आहे.

जीवशास्त्राच्या विद्यार्थ्यांना काही किमान गणित, संख्याशास्त्र, प्रोग्रामिंग यायला पाहिजे आणि त्यातून जी विचारपद्धती निर्माण होते त्याचा जीवशास्त्र समजायला उपयोग झाला पाहिजे या विचारानी मी जीवाशात्स्त्राच्या अभ्यासक्रमामध्ये याचा समावेश करण्याचा आग्रह धरला. मी स्वतः हे विषय शिकवायचो. पण आता अनेक अभ्यासक्रमांमधून हे पुन्हा हद्दपार झाले आहेत किंवा मम म्हणण्यापुरतेच उरले आहेत. बायोइनफॉर्मॅटिक्स सारखे विषय चलनी झाले हे खरं. पण इथे फक्त काही तयार सॉफ्टवेअर वापरून चरकातून डेटा बाहेर कसा काढायचा हेच शिकवलं जातं. हा तंत्रकौशल्य शिकण्याचा कोर्स झाला आहे. विज्ञान किंवा तंत्रज्ञान नाही.

महाविद्यालयांना स्वायत्तता असावी असा आग्रह मीच धरला होता. माझा त्यामागचा अनुभव असा कि आम्हाला दर्जेदार शिक्षण देण्याच्या मार्गात विद्यापीठाचे सुमार दर्जाचे अभ्यासक्रम मधे येत आहेत. त्यामुळे चांगल्या महाविद्यालयांना, किमान चांगल्या विभागांना स्वायत्तता द्यावी. म्हणजे त्यांची कामगिरी अधिक सरस होईल. आता चांगले प्राध्यापक निवृत्त झाले, नव्या नेमणुका झाल्याच नाहीत, रोजंदारीवर सुमार दर्जाचे शिक्षण रेटले जाते. अशी महाविद्यालयांची संपूर्ण वासलात लागल्याची खात्री झाल्यावर मग स्वायत्तता दिली जात आहे. या सगळ्या गोष्टी पाहत राहण्याखेरीज काही करणे शक्य नाही. म्हणजे या बाबतीत तरी माझ्या आईचं म्हणणं जरासुद्धा खरं झाल्याचं दिसत नाही. व्यवस्था चांगल्या दिशेनी बदलण्यासाठी माझा काडीइतकाही उपयोग झाला नाही.

याउलट संस्थात्मक शिक्षण-संशोधनाला रामराम ठोकण्याचा निर्णय घेतल्यानंतर माझ्याहातून जे झालं आणि चालू आहे ते मी शिक्षणसंस्थांमध्ये राहून करत होतो त्यापेक्षा कितीतरी अधिक भरीव आहे, आणि त्याहून महत्वाचं म्हणजे ते करण्यात मला बरीच जास्ती मजा येत आहे. शेतकऱ्यांच्या समस्यांवर शेतकरी स्वतःच संशोधक होऊन उत्तर शोधू शकतात याची उदाहरणे दाखवून देऊ शकलो. संशोधन संस्थांमध्ये नसलेले विद्यार्थी, गृहिणी, निवृत्त व्यक्ती केवळ मला इंटरेस्ट आहे म्हणून संशोधन करून विज्ञानात नवीन संकल्पनांची भर घालू शकतात हे दाखवून दिलं. माझ्यासारखीच चाकोरीबद्ध शिक्षणात न रमणारी मुलं माझ्याकडे अजूनही येतात. आम्ही विविध विषयांवर बोलतो, नवीन प्रश्न विचारतो, नवीन आव्हाने उभी करतो, स्वतः शोध घेण्याचा प्रयत्न करतो. त्यातून विज्ञानाला नवीन असं काहीतरी सापडतंही. ते प्रसिद्धही करतो. किती पेपर प्रसिद्ध केले यावर कुणी आमचं मूल्यमापन करणार नसतं. याचा परिणाम अधिक चांगल्या संशोधनात होतो. गेल्या सात वर्षात माझ्या हातून वर्षागणिक जेवढं नाविन्यपूर्ण, कल्पनासमृद्ध, वैविध्यपूर्ण आणि उपयुक्त काम झालं तेवढं मोठ्या संस्थेमध्ये राहूनही याआधी झालं नव्हतं.

मग माझं म्हणणं खरं झालं की आईचं? याचं उत्तर अजूनही इतकं सरळ नाही. मी शाळा-कॉलेज मग IISc सारखी संस्था यातून काहीच शिकलो नाही असं नाही. शाळा सोडून मला ते मिळालंच नसतं असं कदाचित नाही म्हणता येणार. पण व्यवस्थेत राहून त्यातल्या काही गोष्टी तर सोप्या गेल्या असाव्यात. पण जे महत्वाचं मिळालं ते कोर्सवर्क मधून नाही तर इतर वेळी केलेल्या चर्चा, वादविवाद, करून पाहू म्हणून कुतूहलातून केलेल्या गोष्टींमधून मिळालं. सुदैवानी पीएचडी च्या वेळी मला माझ्या मनातल्या प्रश्नावर, मी आखलेल्या पद्धतींनी माझ्या जबाबदारीवर काम करण्याचं स्वातंत्र्य मिळालं. तसं होणार नसेल तर मी पीएचडी सोडून निघून जाईन असं मी जाहीर केलंच होतं. पण ती वेळ आली नाही. शाळा महाविद्यालयातल्या सगळ्या नाही तरी अनेक शिक्षक-प्राध्यापकांनी माझं बंडखोर वागणं चालवून घेतलं. हे सगळे सुदैवी घटक माझ्या बाजूला आहेतच. पण त्यामुळे मला या शिक्षणपद्धतीचा फायदा झाला हेही कुठेतरी खरं आहेच. म्हणजे आईचं म्हणणं पूर्णपणे खोटंही ठरलं नाही. शिक्षण आणि संशोधन व्यवस्था बदलणं माझ्या हाताबाहेर आहे हे खरं असलं तरी मी एक गोष्ट नक्की करू शकलो ती म्हणजे चागलं शिक्षण आणि संशोधन दोन्ही या व्यवस्थेच्या पूर्णपणे बाहेर उत्तम प्रकारे होऊ शकतं याचं एक मॉडेल नक्कीच उभं करून दाखवू शकलो. संशोधन ही काही कुणाची मक्तेदारी नाही. ज्याच्या मनात प्रश्न आहे, ज्याच्या स्वभावात बंडखोरी आहे, ज्याची नवीन गोष्टी शिकण्याची तयारी आहे  असा कुणीही मुलभूत आणि उपयुक्त संशोधन करू शकतो. मला शाळा सोडून तेंव्हा जे करायचं होतं ते व्यवहारात अशक्य नाही हे आज इतक्या वर्षांनी तरी मी दाखवू शकलो आहे. हे करणारा मी पहिला नाही. यापूर्वी विज्ञानात कित्येक मोठ्या मोठ्या गोष्टी शाळेतून काढून टाकलेल्या, अर्धशिक्षित, गृहिणी, विद्यार्थी यांनी केल्या आहेत. दुर्दैवानी आज हे क्षेत्र खूपच कर्मकांडात अडकलं आहे. पीएचडी म्हणजेच संशोधन अशा चुकीच्या समजुतीत गुरफटलं आहे. या कर्मकांडाच्या पलीकडे विज्ञान आहे हे एका छोट्याश्या पातळीवर मी दाखवून देऊ शकलो एवढी तरी माझी बाजू नक्कीच खरी आहे.

Thinking ahead of time: A reward with punishment

Almost 20 years ago I had started suspecting that Streptomyces the genus of actinobacteria known to be the richest in the diversity of antibiotics and other secondary metabolites was a predator of bacteria in soil. Soon a PhD student, Charu Kumbhar took up the challenge and demonstrated with multiple lines of evidence that predatory abilities were quite widespread in the genus. We also developed an argument, quite well supported by facts that most, if not all, antibiotics primarily evolved for predation. Only some of them were selected for other ecological functions. A time lapse video of how the growing mycelia of Streptomyces attack other bacteria was quite dramatic. We were quite thrilled at the discovery.

But publishing this was next to impossible. Nobody believed us. Reviewers couldn’t say anything was wrong in the MS, just that they did not believe this. We ultimately published a couple of papers, Charu’s PhD got through. We had actually opened up a new potential way of looking for new antibiotics. I tried raising money to explore the possibility, but with no luck. At some stage I was able to divert some money from a dumb and therefore well-funded project. We came close to isolating a new interesting antibiotic from the act of predation. But this was the time I took up fights with the institute and left.

Now time has proven that our idea was correct. A lab in Finland independently showed the phenomenon of predation by Streptomyces, this time on yeast. They uncovered much detailed molecular details which we hadn’t. Interestingly they faced problems in publishing it too, and for the same reason. Reviewers did not want to believe. Ultimately the paper came out last month. Almost simultaneously another review was published in Nature Reviews Microbiology who agreed that Streptomyces are predatory and cited us. (For those who believe in impact factors, it was 102 in 2024). So, what we discovered over a decade early is getting increasing acceptance and importance now. Even earlier than all this, prior to the genome era, we had tried to estimate the number of antibiotics not yet discovered from this genus. Our estimate was of over a million. Then came genomics and they showed the same. A large number of secondary metabolite gene clusters were abundant in Streptomyces genome, whose products were not yet found.  Independent of this, new ways of exploring antibiotics have now yielded antibiotics with very interesting characteristics.

I don’t know why, this has kept on repeating with me. In the year 1999, our undergraduates convincingly showed for the first time, the phenomenon of “theory of mind” in birds. This was a time when this ability was being debated in chimpanzees. So showing that in the bird brained creatures was unexpected. We published in Current Science, but it got excellent response. Very soon there many were papers in big journals including Nature on similar lines.

In 2011, we pointed out using a mathematical model that the idea of “thrifty gene” wasn’t sound, even theoretically. The conditions necessary for evolution of such a gene did not exist during human evolution. In just another year, the same conclusion was reached with a different mathematical approach by a group in UK and they published it in a much higher prestige journal.

During the peak of Covid 19 pandemic, we showed that the evolution of new viral variants is not mutation limited but selection limited. This was in stark contrast with the mainstream belief. By this time I had decided to quit academia and had started working independently. Obviously, any journal with APC was not an option available. We published in Qeios. Four years later the same conclusion was published by a multi-national group in ISEMPH, an Oxford journal. I pointed this out to the authors, who had not cited us. They gave an honest response and wrote to editor requesting a correction in which they wanted to include our prior work. The editor did not respond.    

I have mixed feelings about such instances. Quite frequently my lab was ahead in thinking, often by several years. But that made publication very hard. Often we had to be content on publishing in smaller journals and those who showed the same thing after a few years got their papers published in more prestigious journals. We also failed to get funding for taking the concept forward. That happened many years later in some elite institution.

But I look at the other side of it. If this has happened many times in the past, it is also going to happen with so many novel concepts and results we have published already but nobody noticed them. That list is much bigger. I know our findings are theoretically sound and evidence supported and the world will rediscover them sooner or later, (the latter being more likely). This includes my interpretation of type 2 diabetes which completely defies all prevalent theories. Glucose and insulin are not central to diabetes, normalizing glucose does not reduce mortality or complications. Insulin resistance based theories are already proved wrong by reproducible experiments. T2DM and many other lifestyle disorders arise from “vitaction deficiency”, deficiency of a set of behaviours in the wild for which our physiology has evolved. Over 25 papers and 2 books are published on this so far, not a single counter-argument, but also no response in the public. Privately I have a number of appreciating responses, who didn’t want to say so publicly.

The same is the story with my analysis of the problems in wild life conservation policies in India. The increasing human wildlife conflict is well known, but the mainstream wants to hide the facts. Pretend that everything is alright. Our group published factual data, reasons why the prevalent policy is failing, what the alternative policy needs to be. I received a number of appreciations in the private. Hardly anyone wants to say anything in the public.  

In 2022, a paper in BBS claimed that behaviour informed policy has failed to work at system level. But before this paper appeared, we had worked and published on behaviour optimized system design for dealing with crop loss by wild animals, an alternative to crop insurance, a long term policy for going beyond the caste system. Now I have also written about a behaviour optimized system design for academia. These ideas are not only theoretically novel and sound. One of them has been subject to successful experiments and pilot scale implementation. The concept of behaviour optimized policy can revolutionize governance and regulation, if and when it’s understood by the orthodox and dumb mainstream.     

Then we have a completely different evolutionary reasoning and interpretation of cancer, that has a potential for cancer prevention. We have one publication but much more unpublished and partly developed work on how to make causal analysis from regression-correlation parameters alone, which can revolutionize data science.

Also under development is a radically different and more sound interpretation of currently dirty, ambiguous and anomalous concepts such as inflammation, stress and aging. I know the mainstream will not recognize this thinking during my lifetime perhaps. But I enjoy working this way. Perhaps the undergrads and other non-academic volunteer researchers that I work with might be benefited too. They also enjoy for sure. Being ahead of time in thinking and seeing things with clarity is a reward by itself. Whether mainstream academia recognizes this as science or not, I don’t care.  If they don’t, they are at loss, not me.

The tragedy of flawless arguments:

If you have a flawless and evidence supported compelling argument that is different from the prevalent theories or beliefs in a field, you cannot be successful in science within your life time. This would sound strange but is quite expected from the human behaviour perspective. There are also many examples from the past as well as in the present day science.

There is an old story where Darwin was wrong and someone showed that he was wrong with good amount of data and sound arguments. Well, Darwin was wrong on a number of issues. That does not undermine evolutionary theory. At times Darwin was wrong because biology was primitive that time. He was talking about inheritance without having any clue to the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. So he made certain assumptions which later turned out to be wrong. The theory of natural selection remains unaffected after correcting for the known mechanisms of inheritance and that’s what neo-Darwinism did eventually. But this knowledge came much after Darwin’s death.

Another issue where Darwin was wrong happened to be raised during his Lifetime. Darwin identified the value of sexual selection and wrote about it in his later book. For a long time, and even today evolutionary biologists often mix up issues. Sexual selection is often taken to be only females choosing males, invariably leading to sexual dimorphism in which males are larger and have developed extreme secondary sexual characters. In principle, there can be sexual selection without sexual dimorphism. Even if we assume that only females choose males for a given character, the character may be inherited by daughters equally. In fact, that is the default. For male specific characters they need to be on the sex chromosome or their expression needs to be hormonally regulated. This needs to evolve specifically and only certain contexts will facilitate sexual dimorphism. Otherwise sexually selected character should be seen in both the sexes by default. But the argument was being made under a total absence of the knowledge about the mechanisms of inheritance. It was also laden with the prevalent social prejudices. Darwin perhaps could not escape the prevalent paradigms completely. Although he was bold and courageous enough to contradict certain prevalent beliefs, he fell prey to certain others. So Darwin appears to believe and writes that in humans males are superior in strength, bravery, skills and intellect just like males in sexually dimorphic species.  

A lady called Antoinette Brown Blackwell contradicted Darwin on these issues with an argument carefully prepared over four years. She used examples from biology showing that Darwin was wrong in certain matters. Today we know that sexual selection does not necessarily imply sexual dimorphism, and applying these arguments to humans needs to be done with great care. What strikes me the most about this story is not the details of these arguments, it is the fact that Darwin did not publish any reply to the criticism.

It’s not Darwin alone. This is in human behaviour. Perhaps there might be a few exceptions somewhere, but in general this is modal behaviour of scientists. Max Plank and Thomas Kuhn made this explicit. Evidence, sound logic, mathematics etc. is not enough to change the prevalent theories and opinions. Scientists are generally not convinced by science. The human nature dominates over the principles of science. If they come across a counter-argument, they take a look to see whether there are any obvious flaws in the argument that they can attack. If there are any, they attack it publicly irrespective of whether or not these issues were really central to the argument. Such a response is likely to lead to a debate. There is chance that truth might be established when there is a debate.

But if they do not find obvious flaws, what do they do? They just keep mum. A flawless argument never gets any reply. They neither admit the weakness of their side of the debate, nor do they try to rebut. They pretend that they never read the counter-argument. They behave as if it does not exist. The further course depends upon the status of the person who raised the counter-argument. If it comes from an elite, it will have at least some consequences. If from a non-elite the scientists know it quite well that if they keep mum, others will also do the same. The quality of the argument actually doesn’t mean anything to science. Who says it and where it is published matters.

Darwin was perhaps fortunate that so many people attacked his theory. That resulted in a debate because logic is more likely to prevail when there is an open debate. If those who opposed the theory of evolution were wise enough, they could have simply ignored Darwin’s book and then biology would have remained in dark ages for several more decades. But instead they criticized it heavily and that was fortunate for biology. The theory of evolution eventually became central to biological thinking.

Today’s scientists are smarter. They never entertain any debate. They only try to suppress the counter-argument, if any. In today’s science publishing system with confidential peer reviews and journal prestige era, it is just too easy to suppress the counter-argument. Platforms like PubPeer may have changed the picture only marginally at the most. Very few PubPeer comments receive a response from the authors or editors. Elite journals and authors from elite locations enjoy an impunity from cross questions, objections, counter-arguments and debates. All that they have to do is ignore them. But there is another side of the (highly biased) coin. For those who cross question, failure to get a response most likely means your argument is flawless. Authors have nothing to defend, they know that they are wrong and therefore the silence. They may enjoy impunity, but eventually history would remember their science as flawed, faulty and refuted. Just that whenever you see a serious flaw, it needs to be flagged with well articulated, logical and evidence based arguments. For a while, it may look like nobody takes any notice, but I am sure history will.

Human wildlife conflict mitigation: revision 1 made public

In response to my appeal to comment on the draft 1 of HWC mitigation policy document many comments were received. None wanted to post their comments publicly. But I have revised the document in response to them and the revised document is here. Thanks everyone for their inputs. More inputs are welcome.

My diagnosis: Why Indian science remains mediocre

Science seems to be monopolized by a few elite institutions and a handful of prestigious journals. Science coming from all other places including India is mediocre (At least that is the prevalent belief.).  What is the reason for this? In my diagnosis it is certainly not infrastructure, funding, talent or collegiality. The true causes are the religious beliefs about journal prestige and peer reviews. The belief that only publishing in big journals makes science big has no foundation. The idea is a belief that has never been challenged or tested with data. It is there only because of the laziness to read. Reading the journal name is a lot easier than reading the paper and by human nature scientists only do whatever is easy.

The second belief, on the other hand, has been tested with data. The hypothesis that prestigious journals have more rigorous peer review system and they publish papers based on their quality has been tested with experiments and data and found absolutely wrong. Papers are accepted not by its content but by the prior reputation of authors and their institutions. This is very much evident by well-designed studies and analysis of editorial data. The behavioural origins of biases have also been made clear. So there is substantial literature on how much, how and why peer reviews are biased. But so far there was no consideration of the consequences of peer review bias. This I started doing in the form of a simulation model in this paper.

The logic is simple. Research funding, researcher’s motivation and publication output work in a positive feed back vicious cycle. Because of the auto-catalytic nature of the process a small peer review bias can result into a large difference in the output. And in reality, the peer review bias is not small by any standard. For the same manuscript, the odds of acceptance from a reputed location are over 6 times that of obscure authors. The difference between acceptance rates across countries is of the same order. Science published its editorial data analysis that shows a huge difference between acceptance rates of US versus China. India is not even considered in the analysis. As expected, much of the country based rejection is without reading and reviewing the content. They have admitted this difference and haven’t ruled out editorial bias as the main cause. They failed to reply to any cross question as well.

When a paper gets rejected, much time and efforts are needed to revise and resubmit, there are increased chances of it getting scooped during this time. Failure to publish affects further funding and thereby the downstream productivity. In simulations a small bias (10 %) in peer review resulted into one or two orders of magnitude difference in productivity even when no difference in research caliber was assumed. More important than that, the difference was escalated by increased competition. This is the reason why the problem is more intense in today’s highly competitive academia.

But more important is the second model of the paper which is about optimizing novelty. The model highlights the logical possibility that there an optimum level of novelty of research ideas which brings maximum success. Because of asymmetry in peer reviews the optimum for the elite and non-elite institutions can be widely different. In an obscure location, researchers doing mediocre work are more likely to be successful than researchers having out of the box, even revolutionary ideas. This is the most important behavioural reason why science coming from such places is mediocre. There may be and there is extraordinary talent in any and every part of the world. But extraordinary science is most unlikely to get published from obscure places. Talent gets discouraged very soon and by the innate tendency of the human mind to optimize, starts thinking mediocre, because that gives greater returns.

If this is true, the way out becomes clear. First researchers from non-elite locations need to stop giving any importance to getting published in prestigious journals. I have seen pulp or even fraudulent papers getting published very frequently in top ranking journals. So the contents of a paper need to be viewed independent of where it is published. The fact that peer reviews are inherently biased needs to be publicly admitted and publication policy changed accordingly. India is particularly lucky to have a set of journals published by many Indian academies which are free to authors as well as readers. The academies need to make the peer reviews open in the public domain independent of acceptance/rejection. Research evaluation, in my view is an inherently bad idea; but if inevitable, research published only in transparent peer review journals need to be considered. If this policy is declared, researchers will publish in open peer review journals. That would make peer reviews more responsible.

All this needs honesty and courage. If that itself is lacking (which, I am afraid, is true for typical Indian academics) then such people will only keep on doing mediocre science. The colonial dominance will continue using biased peer reviews as the main power weapon. Science will be monopolized even more and the global power imbalance will keep on increasing.

Since science is an economic and political power weapon today, peer review bias is subtly driving global economic, social and political imbalance and nobody seems to realize this. There is substantial literature showing strong peer review biases and imbalances, so why are we shy of even talking about it? I see cowardice as the only possible answer.  India has huge research talent but this cowardice will destroy India’s science. Any amount of funding and infrastructure support will not be able to change the picture qualitatively. We need to reject the prevalent publication systems and start from scratch on our own. I am sure, if such a bold step is taken it will revolutionize global science making it more equitable and humanitarian.  

Data twisting for money or in defense of prior beliefs ?

Those who believe in astrology keep on telling stories how astrological predictions turned out to be correct in so many cases and also concoct theories on how the stars shape our fate. Quite often scientists do the same but in a little more sophisticated way. Instead of stories, they have data. In both, stories as well as what they call data, reality and fiction is inseparable. It is not all made up. There are real instances or some real data too. But if cherry-picked and/or twisted sufficiently any data supports the theory you already believe in. This is human behaviour and it is common to be misled as well as to mislead others.

But we have a different expectation from scientists. They are not free of the biases of the human mind. But they also have the philosophy, logic, methods of science and a conscious mind. In Daniel Kahneman’s jargon, everyone is bound to go by the system 1 responses, that are innate human tendencies along with the innate biases. When some evidence goes against prior beliefs, the system 1 response is to reject the evidence itself. But system 2 responses do exist that can be consciously employed. System 2 comprises of thoughtful, conscious, deliberate responses that come with efforts. Science needs the use of system 2 responses, which many researchers do not even seem to be aware of. They seem to be easily carried away by their system 1. Or are they?

The story is about faith in type 2 diabetes treatment. By bringing blood glucose level back to normal one can avoid getting any of the complications of diabetes is a belief that never had any data support. There was correlation between high sugar levels and the incidence of complications no doubt. Also in the context of type 1 diabetes insulin treatment did show good success. That is the origin of the belief. But this was a typical correlation causation problem. High sugar was believed to be the cause of diabetic complications and a theory was built around the concept of insulin resistance and hyperglycemia driven damage. Later reproducible experiments proved the insulin resistance theory wrong and clinical trials failed to arrest complications by reducing blood glucose. Nevertheless, the belief continues and research papers keep on claiming that the belief is true although their raw data never supports what they claim.

Then how does it work? It works simply by repeating the rhetoric so often that the belief is made stronger. The belief becomes so strong that any research showing it is not true is rejected, often without review. I somehow got into the habit of looking at original data and found that the whole thing is 100 % fraud. There is absolutely NO evidence that normalizing sugar arrests diabetic complications. Then how do they keep on publishing “evidence”?

They do it using the following tricks.

  1. Start a large number of clinical trials, publish only those whose data can be used to mislead. On clinicaltrials.gov, the portal where maximum number of clinical trials are registered, and where raw data is supposed to be made available, my search showed that for insulin alone 1889 clinical trials were completed out of which only about 30 % had made their data public. For metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1RAs and statins the proportion of trials who published their data ranges between one third to less than one half. This indicates that only when the data are convenient, it is made public. All inconvenient results, which appear to be more frequent, are hidden.
  2. In each of the trials multiple end points and adverse events are monitored. They range between dozens and thousands. By chance some of them show lower incidence in the intervention arm than the control arm. That is enough to start beating drums of treatment efficiency. When multiple statistical tests are performed a correction for multiplicity needs to be done. Almost no clinical trial follows this statistical norm. Most clinical trial papers do not even recognize this limitation.
  3. Apart from selective reporting, there is differential reporting. For example, if in a clinical trial with 10 years follow up period, suppose 5 % in the control group and 4 % in the treatment group suffers a given serious complication, the absolute difference is 1 %. Simultaneously suppose the treatment shows serious side effects of the drug in 1% and none in the control. This absolute difference is also 1 %. The report would typically say that the odds ratio for the complication is 0.79, i.e. there is 21 % benefit. The incidence of complications, on the other hand is reported to be only 0.1 % per patient year. The common readers’ impression is that the benefit is 21 % and side effects are only 0.1 %.  Here the mathematics is not wrong, but a misleading impression is successfully created. It is just too common that the benefits of treatment are reported in one statistical format and the adverse effects in a different format so that the reader can be easily misled.
  4. There is arbitrary classification of adverse events into “serious” and “non-serious” giving no definition of seriousness. All or most adverse events where the intervention group has greater frequency are put under “non-serious”. Sometimes even faeces discoloration, nausea, are labeled serious and severe reactions necessitating discontinuation of the treatment as non-serious. Seriousness is a matter of convenience for the pre-decided inference.
  5. There is large proportion of discontinuations from the trial. If the causes of discontinuation are different in the treatment and control groups, it creates a systematic difference defeating the purpose of randomization in the groupings. This error is never even recognized. Often discontinuation in the treatment group is because of side effects and discontinuation in control groups because of disappointment. This creates a resilience selection bias that alone can give substantial difference in the two groups without the drug having any benefit.
  6. The trials are published in high impact journals. Their peer reviewers never mind the above problems. If any of the statistical problems are pointed out and the conclusions challenged or cross questioned, the authors and editors never even reply. If cross questions are raised on PubPeer like platforms, no response is obtained. There is no debate, no challenge; meaning thereby that there is no science. Open debate is a necessary part of science.

Such things are common. But when nothing of this works and the data still show no difference across the control and treated groups in adverse events or mortality, they start concocting new ways of grouping and compare across these groups to show a large effect. Their creative thinking in doing so is amazing. Every time, when all the standard tricks fail to support their pre-decided conclusions, they concoct novel ways to twist the data.

One such paper appeared of late in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. It takes data from two trials namely DPPOS and DaQingDPOS. In both of them there is no evidence of any antidiabetic drug bringing down any of the adverse outcomes. Also a recent meta-analysis of 18 studies claiming diabetes remission is unable to give any evidence that remission gives any protection against micro or macrovascular complications and mortality (https://pubpeer.com/publications/7DCBDF43080DA21EDE754182787435). There is some inconsistent evidence for the effect of lifestyle factors in the DaQingDPOS.  But this paper just does not compare control and treatment. Instead, it pools the control and treated groups and compares those individuals with “remission” wrt glucose parameters and those without remission. Those with remission have lower rates of complications (no surprise) and therefore they conclude that remission should be the target of treatment. There is no evidence of remission having a causal role in protection in this analysis. It is quite likely that individuals with milder pathophysiology find remission easier and are also less prone to complications. This is only a correlation. But they take it implicitly as causation. Neither the papers nor the registry data reveal how many remissions were in the control group, how many in the treated one. There is no difference across the treated and untreated for sure, but still they say treatment to achieve remission is effective in arresting complications!!

I immediately posted a challenge on PubPeer, did not spend time in writing a letter to the journal from prior experience of no response. I am sure these PubPeer comments will also remain without any response as they have for a dozen clinical trial papers I challenged over the last year. This behaviour is very stereotyped and predictable. The only question I am raising here is why do they do so? Is their prior belief so strong that they do not realize they are indulging into an obvious fraud? Is it to keep on getting funded by the pharma companies? Do they specifically get paid for this fraud? I have no way to know. But the fact remains that almost all diabetologists believe that normalizing sugar is the right kind of treatment for type 2 diabetes. Nobody even doubts this although there is no rigorous study in support. I see only two options. Either the diabetologists are stupid enough not to figure out that they are being fooled or they are themselves a part of the bigger fraud. I leave it to the reader to figure out.

How careless editors can be: Two recent experiences

I generally know over a long time that being an editor is a tough job. The unanswered question in my mind was, how do they cope with the challenge? As I started probing the answer appeared to be very simple. They do it by being careless. That is perhaps the only way they can survive the pressure. It works because of the confidentiality of the editorial process. They can easily get away being careless. This is equally true of all the high and low prestige journals. I got two very illustrative and representative examples in 2025 that I am relating below. They are not isolated examples. I have experienced this on several occasions but two stories are enough to illustrate.

In September I communicated a MS to Medical Hypotheses. Obviously, it was a hypothesis paper. But the editor thought that it was a review and returned the manuscript saying that we do not publish reviews. The MS is now public (https://www.qeios.com/read/6PKD32) and the readers may decide whether it is a hypothesis or not. The fact that we use a large volume of literature in support of the hypothesis does not make it a review. But that’s ok, there can be a difference of opinion about this, which is an intrinsic part of science. Categories of articles are rather artificial and too much importance need not be given to it. Wherever there is a new novel concept which sounds logical, testable with some support from existing literature and ways of testing it further are also suggested it is sufficient to call it a hypothesis. But the editor labeled it as a review and I don’t mind that. But I am a teacher by nature and immediately thought that it is a good opportunity to use this example for students to understand the types of articles, the norms as well as the ambiguity in classifying them. I asked the editor by email whether they consent to use our correspondence as a teaching material or a pedagogical article.

I expected a yes or no reply to this. Instead, after a few days I received an email from Elsevier Research Support division asking me what help I needed from their unit to improve my article. This I had never asked. I was ok with the rejection. I just had asked for editor’s consent to use this hypothesis-review debate for teaching purpose. I wrote back saying, “I don’t need any help. Perhaps the editor needs help in reading my email or understanding my question.” It is obvious that neither the editor nor the research support team had read my email. There was nothing difficult to understand. Then after some more delay I received a reply form the research support team saying that the correspondence was confidential and I should not publish it anywhere. Why didn’t I get this simple response right away on my first mail? The simple answer is that the editor just did not read my mail or was not able to understand my simple question. The latter is most unlikely as editors are not that dumb (well not too sure about this!!). So the clear indication is that they are careless. They don’t even read emails.

The second example is from PNAS, a very prestigious journal. I communicated a paper as direct submission. They took much longer time than what they promise, but that is understandable. After five weeks they rejected without review. This is not unusual, but interesting. In the rejection letter they routinely write a line saying that the the decision does not reflect on the technical quality of the paper. I see a logical dissonance here. Journal prestige is based on the implicit assumption that good journals publish high quality papers. The journals on the other hand declare that rejections are not based on the quality. I wrote an email mainly about this logical contradiction. I did not necessarily expect an elaborate reply. The editor could have said that replying to such a question is outside my editorial capacity.

But instead, I got a funny reply saying that your paper cannot be reconsidered for publication. I had not asked reconsideration at all. The reply was entirely irrelevant. This again means that the editor had not even bothered to read the email, or had not understood the question. This demonstrate that even editors of most prestigious journals do not care even to read emails. Again they do not have the capacity to understand questions is most unlikely, so being careless is the only possibility. I am amazed that such carelessness characterizes the system of science publishing. How do we expect reliability of published research?

PNAS consented to making this correspondence public and readers can find it here. Medical hypotheses did not, so I haven’t made it public.

I won’t blame editors alone. They are careless for two reasons, one is that they are under tremendous pressure and second, they can get away because of the confidentiality of the editorial processes. It is the system fault. But what amazes me is that editors are not coming out clearly on the need to rethink and redesign the system itself (except some editors speaking out after retirement). By human nature they won’t because personally they are doing good in the existing system. If it is bad for science or causing injustice to someone else, why should they be worried!!

A crisis for sure

Richard Horton, the chief editor of Lancet, recently wrote an editorial “Research integrity-a challenge not a crisis”. He feels that the fraudulent research is not a crisis in the field of science publication. This is of course a defensive knee jerk reaction of an editor. A letter by Grey et al saying, no, it IS a crisis followed.

So, what constitutes a challenge and what is a crisis?

May I suggest a simple way to decide what a challenge and what a crisis is, using a simple metaphor? In fatal cancer, cancer cells are still in a minority. Majority of cells are normal and functional. The cancer cells can kill even when they still constitute a small percentage of the total body cells. The body has mechanisms to prevent cancer or launch an immune response. Showing that the mechanisms exist is not enough to prevent cancer, they have to work. A growing tumour means they are not. Having a continued vigil is a challenge, but when it falls short and is unable to meet the challenge, it is a crisis. In short, cancer causing mutations is a challenge, but a growing tumour is a crisis.

The parallel with research integrity is obvious. Like cancer cells, only a minority of researchers may be directly involved in fraudulent research. Also, academic systems have mechanisms to arrest misconduct. Is this sufficient to deny crisis? The critical question is whether the peer reviews, editorial distinctions, integrity committees and PubPeer like platforms really work. Their presence is not enough. Is there any way to decide whether the spirit of science is dying out or surviving despite the challenge? Multiple studies have shown the failure of peer reviews and editorial decisions. The number of retractions are growing, number of articles expressing concern about misconduct are growing. But it can still be argued that these are exceptional failures of an otherwise working system. Whether misconduct is really growing despite the measures is difficult to decide. So, by the criteria used by Horton one cannot decide whether to call it a challenge or crisis. But I have an alternative prognostic marker, easy to measure.

A simple indicator of healthy science is the readiness to respond to questions and challenges. This can be easily checked by studying how many serious questions on PubPeer like platforms evoke a response from the authors. I have not systematically looked at data, but a quick glance also reveals that most of the serious questions remain unaddressed. In the last one year I raised about a dozen queries, serious enough to challenge the conclusions of the published papers and none received any response. This must be true beyond my own experience. This the reason why Holden Thorp had to write the editorial, “breaking the silence”, in which he appealed the community to respond to any cross questions, challenges and allegations. But this obviously has failed to break the silence, and Thorp himself failed to respond to PubPeer comments on his own article, it indicates that the culture of dialogue and debate which is so central to science is on the death bed. Without an open debate, science is dead, no matter how many papers keep on flooding the journals.

So the choice of perception is simple. If you think fatal cancer is a crisis, then research integrity is a crisis too and it has to be treated at the fundamental level. If editors of big journals and elites of the field do not feel that there is a crisis, then very soon science is going to be dead although they may still drape and decorate the corpse.

Zero debate “Science”?

There have been many mega debates on various issues in science which became landmarks in the progress of science. The debate on interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Lamarckian-Darwinian evolution debate, the sociobiology debate, the correlation causation debate all have been among the celebrated ones. All of them were crucial in deciding the path towards better science, clearer concepts and passionate pursuit of truth.

Can you name any ongoing debate about any fundamental scientific issue? At least I can’t. But we hear umpteen number of fights about research misconduct, fraudulent publications, paper mills, accusations of plagiarism, demands for retraction and court cases based on any of these. Where are academia going?

I have several anecdotes, not about debates, rather about what should have been debated, but wasn’t. The biggest story is that of Type 2 diabetes. My group showed with multiple lines of evidence (including reproducibility confirmed experiments, sound mathematical models, epidemiological data, clinical trial data, exposing logical anomalies in existing theory) that the insulin resistance based theory behind type 2 diabetes was unsustainable, falsified and utterly wrong. The glucose normalization focus of treatment has failed in arresting diabetic complications because glucose is not central to diabetic pathology. Many clinical trials say this honestly. Others have claims of success which are easily turned down by simply looking at their raw data. We published this in the form of a series of peer reviewed research papers, critical reviews, many talks and conference posters, a book, many PubPeer challenges to misleading clinical trials. I am open to the possibility that I may be wrong. But someone needs to show what is wrong in our stand. What we saw instead was a complete silence. No argument, no debate, no challenge, no cross questioning. Just mum.

This is not the only story. I tried to initiate several debates on different issues, every time being careful about being sound, analytical, evidence supported, logically and mathematically rigorous. I have related some of these stories on my earlier blog posts. But nothing happened. In some cases, at a personal level the researchers whom I had directly criticized responded in personal emails. (Some, though not all, were kind enough to make me their raw data available, on analyzing which I could not support their claims.) Their responses often sounded like “explainawaytions” which did not satisfy me, but that is a minor issue. What intrigues me is that they were not ready for any open debate in the public domain. I had not tried using the PubPeer platform until 3 years ago, but of late I posted on PubPeer serious questions and issues about many publications in leading journals including Science, Nature Medicine, PLOS medicine, Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. The issues raised were seriously challenging the validity of their conclusions. Again, if I was wrong, they could have shown where I was wrong. If it was inadvertent errors, they could have corrected. In one of the letters to the editor I wrote, “If it is an inadvertent mistake, it would be appropriate to correct it to avoid misinterpretation by the reader. But if it is meant for intentional misleading of the reader, then it need not be corrected.” AND THEY DID NOT CORRECT!!  

I have dozens of such stories but the top ranking story is about the editors of Science. Holden thorp and Meagan Phelan wrote an editorial in Science on 13th Feb 2025 entitled, “Breaking the silence”. Wow. They were saying just what I had in mind. If anyone raises any serious issue about the science you published anywhere, you may or may not agree with the challenger but you need to respond. “Silence can be detrimental to public trust”, they said further. I could conclude from this editorial that it is not my experience alone that nobody responds. It is a very common phenomenon and that is detrimental to the spirit of science. Reading the editorial further was somewhat disappointing. I realized that they are not talking about engaging in arguments, debates and challenges; they are mainly focusing only on accusations of fraudulent science!! The mind boggling work of the science sleuths, about which I have admiration, has made an undesirable change. Now the organizations working for science integrity, with good intentions, make every retraction a news headline. The bad effect of this is that, any issue or question raised, discussion, debate or challenge is viewed as an accusation of misconduct. No, we need debates without smelling misconduct. “I think you are mistaken”, or “this analysis could have been done in a better way” is not an accusation. It is to be taken constructively. It should initiate a debate. Difference of opinion is an intrinsic part of science. But the ado about misconduct and retractions has changed the culture unfortunately. Just as the number of papers and JIF are dumb numerical additions to CVs; a PubPeer comment is a taken as equally dumbly negative “score”. If you respond to the comment, there will be more conversation on it and it will be flagged “seven PubPeer comments on this paper.” Without reading what the comments actually say, it will be taken as detrimental to reputation. This is perhaps one major reason why public debates don’t happen now.

But shouldn’t they? Can science exist without debates?

Nobody listens to me; that I can understand. But shouldn’t an editorial in Science make some difference? Over the months that followed, I had many more experiences that made me understand why nobody listens to the editors of Science. The editorial asserted clearly, “Science responds when questions are raised by the scientific community or the public about its published research papers and counsels authors and institutions to do the same, ensuring that legitimate concerns are addressed. This means being straightforward when there are problems while standing up for papers that are correct.”

On 24th June 2025 Thorp wrote another editorial to which I responded pointing out (but in somewhat sugar coated words) that your editorial is honest but is looking at the problem rather superficially. There is a need to go to the root causes of the academic problems. Science made my e-letter public but there was no response to the comments. On a subsequent editorial of 18th Sept 2025 also addressing research integrity I decided to be more straightforward and responded saying very directly that your thinking is truly very superficial. The causes behind research integrity problems are behavioural and the fundamental solution lies in redesigning academia and science publishing making them behaviourally sound. Eliminating bad incentives and ensuring that the cost-benefits of genuine science become more favorable than the cost-benefits of fraudulent science. Of late, many academic groups have been working on behaviour optimized system design. You may encourage them to design behaviour optimized academic systems and that would be a fundamental and long-term solution. I also said that Trump administration has created an opportunity to introspect. Whatever their political motives are, the opportunity to rethink is real. If this is missed, academic reforms will become impossible. This time they did not even make my letter public, forget about giving any thoughtful response. Perhaps my language was too honest, I mean too crude for Science to published. Let’s assume it was rejected for the language issue. Not for the point made.

Then came a report of a study initiated by Science editorial team itself. Jeffray Brainard wrote a story on this report which said that researchers from different countries and institutions have very different acceptance rates in Science. The most straightforward interpretation of this, along with many other well-designed studies is that this is because of peer review bias. But most editors of Science that Brainard interviewed including Holden Thorp kept on illuding peer review bias as the cause. I wrote a PubPeer comment, individually refereeing to what everyone specifically said, that they were playing ostrich. There is ample evidence that there is large peer review bias and you selectively ignore that evidence. A little prior to this incident there was another news article in Science where again the data indicated peer review bias but nobody even considered the possibility. I wrote a PubPeer comment on that too, exposing the cherry picking in both the studies and their news coverage in Science. The response to this was also complete silence.

This contrasts the editorial promise of 13th Feb 2025 that Science will be prompt in engaging with any kind of critical response. It will not avoid getting into a debate. But in reality it has also failed to break the silence. Now I know why nobody would follow the advice of science editors. They don’t really mean it. It’s only lip service.

I have a request to my readers. Can you suggest me a sophisticated and sugar-coated word for “hypocrisy”? That word is too honest for the field of academia and science publishing!!

Policy development by citizens: Contribute if you are interested

I have been advocating citizen science on the background that fraudulent and oedematous science publishing is filling up academia and in many fields better science can be done outside academia. Now I am taking a new step.

I recently had to struggle with policy and realized that policy makers also have equally failed in certain fields. I am not trained in fields such as economics, politics, law, policy or governance but I have strong common sense, some first hand understanding of reality and of human behaviour. Therefore I need to do my job. So I have written a draft policy in two fields where the existing policy has evidently failed. I have tried to do a thorough and thoughtful job from my end, but I may have failed to see some aspects. I am inviting interested citizens to contribute, by carefully reading my drafts and showing your willingness to contribute to further development. I am also specifically inviting well known experts from various field to contribute if they are open minded enough. For other interested readers, indicate in which specific issues you would like to contribute and I will contact you at the right stage. Write only your name, contact, experience, background (you need not have formal qualification in that subject) and the area where you would like to contribute. Write in the comments section or write email to vidnyanak@gmail.com. Avoid writing at length right away, that would make my job messy. It’s better I will contact you one by one and interact at length.

The two areas are

  • Human wildlife conflict management:

HWC is getting rapidly worse in India. Wildlife researchers have completely failed in even perceiving the reality, forget about suggesting realistic solutions. Farmers are suffering huge losses. Only recently one report of the impact of wildlife on agricultural economics in Maharashtra was published by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) that is available at https://farmerandwildlife.com/ . This also has provision for comments. Alternatively access it on my link and write back on the email given above. The study estimates the net agricultural loss to Maharashtra State to be between ten thousand to forty thousand crore per year. Not stagnant at this figure but increasing every year. This is orders of magnitude greater than what wild-lifers have been imagining. For entire India it could be several lakhs of crore every year. That is the true cost of wildlife conservation with the existing policy. It’s ok if the society has to bear a cost for conserving important species, but the question is who pays the cost? It is mostly the farmers whose voices are never heard. Long term conservation is just not possible this way. So something must be done. The GIPE documents stops here where the other one begins.

The other part of this study is to suggest a comprehensive policy for conflict management, which in fact becomes a new policy for conservation itself. The draft policy that I wrote is available for study and Read it here .

This is likely to be a very controversial and sensitive issue and therefore I own the responsibility myself. It clearly advocates fundamental changes to wildlife protection laws in India. It boldly projects the reality that human-wildlife coexistence is just not possible with a complete band on hunting. The institutions and NGOs I talked to were reluctant to publish frank, bold and realistic statements because of the fear of getting into controversy. Privately majority of individuals, including many wildlife researchers and forest officials agree with me. I don’t mind being the villain in the eyes of some sectors, if need be. So read carefully and contribute if you can. Also feel free to criticize me, but not based on sentiments; based on data, study, analysis, considerations in ecology, economics, law, governance and so on.

(2) Overall farmer policy for India:

This is another sensitive issue and my views are fundamentally different that what is being talked about so far. My vision of the policy is based on the upcoming concept of behaviour optimized policy. In this concept everyone is assumed to be inherently selfish and the policy and implementation system needs to be designed in such a way that when everyone behaves with maximum selfishness the system works smoothly and achieves the intended purpose. If you assume the stake holders or regulators to be honest, the system is bound to fail. If there can be corruption, there will be corruption. Policing and punishment just doesn’t make anyone honest and prevent corruption. Instead selfishness should lead to honesty in the new concept since the system itself gives maximum returns to honesty and hard work.

Can we build a corruption free system without relying on policing and punishment? My answer is yes, and that’s what the new concept of behaviour optimized policy aims at. But agriculture is a vast field and no one can be expert in everything about it. I am confident about the foundational principles. Built on this foundation other things need to detailed out. I appeal individuals with interest, experience and expertise (optional) to contribute in the specific issues they have studied or thought of.

This is a novel attempt by itself. Developing a policy by citizens’ inputs is unprecedented in my knowledge. If there any example, I will be happy to study that and learn from it too. But let’s make a beginning. Reading this will be your beginning in the collective venture. It’s a long read, but no hurry. Take your time.

In either of the fields, I do not assume that the government will listen to us. We are not the policy makers, I know. But this situation is not different from any other field in science. Today in academia nobody reads papers. Papers are published only to add to the CV, get PhDs, jobs, promotions and positions. Since I am not in academia, I work and write only because I am interested. That applies to my policy writing as well. If I receive a positive response from people, I hope one day the policy makers will also be positive about it.

Hoping to get as much response as I can read. Feel free to use local language, use translators and post the original as well as translated versions. I understand English, Hindi, Urdu and Marathi. Responses in these languages need not be translated. Feel free to share on whichever platform you feel, I am not interested in credit, but any comments, criticism, feedback or potential contribution needs to flow back.