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Science as the raison d’etat: Nehruvian scientism and the Indian science museum

By Rose Sebastian. The first state-run science museum to come up in independent India was the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, Kolkata (1959). It was followed by the establishment of the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore (1962) and a flurry of other science museums in various cities.  All these institutions, which were initially under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), were later brought under the purview of the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) in 1978 to standardize and coordinate their content and outreach programmes.  The unique exigencies of nation-building in postcolonial India shaped the form and function of these institutions, to achieve economic and social progress through techno-scientific modernity, and establish India as a significant presence in the postwar global politics. Yet another aim was to make science accessible and understandable to the common man, rather than confined to distant laborat...
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Disseminating the Italian History of Medicine: Arturo Castiglioni and His Project at the University of Padua, 1933-1942

By Elena Maria Rita Rizzi. The contribution examines the overlooked project for a museum of the history of medicine at the University of Padua proposed by doctor and professor Arturo Castiglioni in the interwar period.  Although Castiglioni’s plan was only partially realized, it sheds light on a key moment in the dissemination of Italian medicine via the musealization of its material legacies at the University of Padua and, more broadly, in Italy.  While reflecting broader trends in the musealization of medicine that emerged between the nineteenth and twentieth century in Europe, Castiglioni’s project highlights the central role played by the history of medicine in shaping the public narrative of the Venetian atheneum and city in the interwar years.  Embedded, in the late 1930s, in a far-ranging program of patrimonialization of the main university building, Castiglioni’s project also attests to the propagandistic uses of the material culture of medicine, and more broadly...
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AI sees Climate Change as Hotter than Human Experts

By Tenzin Tamang. AI sees climate change as "hotter" than experts do. Our research explores this overestimation bias in LLMs. Ever asked an AI chatbot about climate change? Many of us turn to these powerful tools for quick information, but our new research reveals a surprising quirk: AI models tend to "see hotter", frequently overestimating the impacts of climate change compared to the consensus of expert scientists. This tendency to exaggerate gets even stronger when we ask the AI to respond as if it were a climate scientist. What we did We took statements about climate change impacts directly from the highly respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2023 Synthesis Report. For each statement, the IPCC provides a specific confidence level (e.g., low, medium, or high). We then presented these same scenarios to popular GPT-family models and asked them to rate their confidence in two conditions: (1) directly, and (2) acting as a climate scientist. Wha...
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Moral arguments are likely to deepen the climate divide

 By Robin Bayes.  Photo Credit:  John Englart On July 4, 2025, American climate policy was upended as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) rolled back or canceled many clean energy tax incentives in the United States. Supporters touted this move while opponents lambasted it, each side claiming the moral high ground. While Republican House Budget Committee members argued that the OBBBA stops climate activism as a weapon to harm working families , the Committee’s Democratic caucus argued that it betrays the middle class by killing clean energy jobs and investments. When political messaging uses this kind of harm-based moral rhetoric to escalate the climate policy debate, there may be lasting consequences. Moralizing science and technology is associated with divisive characteristics In a recent short article published in Public Understanding of Science , I examine how moralization affects the way everyday people approach policy debates about science and technology....
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It's the Genes, Stupid! The Views of Far-Right Supporters on Genetics and Social Outcomes

 By Alexandre Morin-Chassé. Photo Credit: Unsplash On July 22, 2011, just before carrying out terrorist attacks that claimed 77 lives in Norway, Anders Breivik released a 1,500-page manifesto. In this document, he detailed his preparations for the attacks and shared his views on various political and social issues.  Among his extensive arguments, Breivik criticized "cultural Marxists" for ignoring scientific evidence suggesting that genetics plays a major role in human abilities and behavior. He advocated for genetic screening and birth control to prevent the extinction of the Nordic race and to increase its average IQ.  Breivik is not the only extreme-right terrorist to espouse such views; manifestos from the shooters involved in the 2019 Christchurch and 2022 Buffalo attacks also included essentialist claims about genetics and their social implications. Albeit a notable viewpoint among lone actor terrorists on the extreme right, little is known about the extent t...
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