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Ancient Planes and Other Claims Spark Controversy at Indian Science Congress
An anonymous reader writes A paper presented at the 102nd Indian Science Congress on Sunday claims that Indians had mastered aviation thousands of years before the Wright brothers. India's science and technology minister Mr. Harsh Vardhan who was present at the conference claimed that ancient Indian mathematicians discovered the Pythagorean theorem but that the Greeks got the credit. These startling claims come just a few days after prime minister Narendra Modi had called Lord Ganesha who is part elephant and part human, a product of ancient India's knowledge of plastic surgery.
lord ganesha proof of plastic surgery?? rarely do i found abject ignorance so funny. but this is gold!!
And the ancient planes also had the ability to fly between planets too. Don't think that these claims will stand up to review.
Ancient peoples were just as smart as us, but you need time to build the necessary tech. base in order to make advanced equipment so that you can discover advanced scientific theories and engineering disciplines.
It's an interesting phenomenon and you see the same thing in Russian science. There are an awful lot of brilliant scientists in both India and Russia doing amazing things. But it's like there's no filter. The unadulterated garbage rises just as much to the top as the actual great scientific work. I can't help but wonder if it's related to the same sort of corruption and patronage systems that you see a lot in the business and political world as well.
It's also interesting that even on things that they innovate on (and there have been a lot), you don't see much commercialization actually within their respective countries. You see a lot more when they leave and move to Europe or the US or whatnot.
If you play a Ke$ha song backwards, you hear messages from Satan. Even worse, if you play it forwards you hear Ke$ha.
It's an interesting phenomenon and you see the same thing in Russian science. There are an awful lot of brilliant scientists in both India and Russia doing amazing things. But it's like there's no filter. The unadulterated garbage rises just as much to the top as the actual great scientific work.
It's a good thing this sort of quackery is limited to India and Russia. I'd be pretty embarrassed if we had some of our people claiming that the world was only a few thousand years old, that climate change doesn't exist, and that we didn't evolve over time but were all designed by a supernatural entity.
These two situations are not comparable. Yes, the United States has Creationists and such, but they tend to move in their own circles, and even in academia they are found at private Christian universities. In India and Russia however, one tends to see a lot of quackery coming from state-run universities. This is probably facilitated by stronger job security (against much lower salaries) for certain faculty, combined with lower barriers to publication.
And how is India different?
In India idiots are recognized as idiots.
Or claiming that water fluoridation causes sterilization or vaccination causes autism or GMOs are killing us.
Liberal and Conservative sides can both be equally anti-science.
Place something witty here
Nearly every comment on this article deviates from 'really bad peer reviews' into racist bigotry. Shame on you lot.
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These two situations are not comparable. Yes, the United States has Creationists and such, but they tend to move in their own circles, and even in academia they are found at private Christian universities. In India and Russia however, one tends to see a lot of quackery coming from state-run universities. This is probably facilitated by stronger job security (against much lower salaries) for certain faculty, combined with lower barriers to publication.
To some extent. But the claims on ancient indian technology are religious-based as well, in most respects. And what an indian government official says is not necessarily a shared opinion of the actual academics. As a side note, my recollection is that the pythagorean theorem being first discovered in India actually has some credibility, the rest of the examples are utter garbage of course.
Slashdot is haven for people who prefer an evidence based approach, and despise you idiots who need to boil everything down to "left" and "right" since both sides of the spectrum as seen by the US are full of hypocrisy.
If you blindly think the left is all good or the right is all good ... you're a fucking moron who is driven by ideology and not intellect.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I would refine that a bit further. It's not just Fundamentalists, but Fundamentalists who refuse to accept that others may hold differing opinions, and further, those Fundamentalists who believe it is justified to use force to change the opinions of others.
I consider myself a fundamentalist, but I do not believe it is my job to force anyone into accepting my views, and I would defend your right to hold positions I consider incorrect.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So, I assume this means that the prime minister and Minister of Science have already been removed from office?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And landed men on the moon, sent the first probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Invented the transistor and IC, created Unix and C and managed to turn Japan in to democratic nation and kept Europe for burning to the the ground...
And we have nukes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It also seems like our American politicians that land on the side of the quackery don't actually believe it most of the time, they're using a population that's too stupid to see that their patron only wants their votes. The politician almost always stops short of fully committing to the quackery cause.
These reports make it clear that many politicians in other countries either are much less cautious, or actually do support these crazy notions.
Granted, we could just be seeing the crazy part, as crap rises to the top and makes for good press, regardless of how fringe it is.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yes, the Indians have it wrong
It isn't "the Indians", it is a fringe group of kooks at the top of the BJP. The BJP is the KKK of India, and Narendra Modi is their David Duke. It says something about the sickness of Indian society that he is also the country's prime minister.
Mixing GMOs with water fluaridation and vaccination hysteria shows you have no idea what the problems is about GMOs.
The main objection to GMOs isn't that they kill humans directly.
The IP problems surounding GMOs should be enough for slashdot types to reject them.
Also most GMOs are simply more resistent to pesticides. So more GMOs => more poison in food production.
Another argument is, that GMOs have genes inserted that no plant ever could acquire naturally. So we simply have no idea what in the long term will happen with these GMO strains. Most probably nothing, but when the entire food production is at stake, I would be carful.
To some degree, I can accept "lost technology." A claim that the Indians had some metallurgical technique that was lost and rediscovered by Europeans? I can buy that. I'd still require proof, but I can accept that this might happen. Primitive glider-type airplanes developed by Indians thousands of years ago? This is getting more far fetched and requires more proof, but perhaps someone there made one glider that worked for one flight. Advanced planes with the capability for space-flight to other planets? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. If you want to prove this, you'll need a lot more than "it's written down in some text somewhere." (If written text counts as proof then a thousand years from now there will be proof that Americans had galaxy-wide space-flight capability in the 20th Century thanks to some sci-fi stories.)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Indians a thousand years ago having modern or even futuristic technology that was lost without a trace save for writing in one book (which might be open to interpretation) is *NOT* extraordinary proof.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How can a person grow up in such an environment and *not* end up as a conspiracy theorist?
I have a boss who is a Russian (his father was an officer in the Red Army, and I'd guess that party membership went along with that) and it's often amazing how his "management style" often ends up feeling like a parody of life in the communist party. "Meetings" which often ended up being long-winded droning about a bunch of topics, management-by-decree, and when he screwed something up at a client it was amazing how he would go into truth-suppression mode, outright lying and in one case, fabricating "evidence" to deny his involvement in problem.
As maddening as his management "style" was, he was a decent human being and often quite flexible and generous on a one-on-one basis. I just couldn't help but think his entire life had been exposed to both the weird thinking of the Red Army (which is probably not that much weirder than any Army) AND life in the community party and he just didn't know any different. He ultimately hired another guy (native-born American, with more management experience) who took over most of his employee-facing management.
Another friend I related this to had a Russian friend who ran his own company. When I related my story to her she said "Of course it's because he's Russian. My friend figured that out after he had several employees quit and figured out you can't manage Americans like Russians; he hired someone to manage people and it got so much better."