New Delhi: Science mixed with religious beliefs, ideas, mythology is slowly taking over Science in India, as scientific minds are vocalizing their pseudoscientific beliefs without fear of ridicule ending in utter unscientific nonsensical statements.
Well recently, two Scientists including vice-chancellor of a state university uttered something similar to nonsensical unscientific statements which called for nationwide ridicule, TOI reports.
The existence of Test-tube baby and Stem Cell technology in the Mahabarata period, ancient Indians having aircrafts 2000 years ago, with Ravana having 24 aircrafts, airport, wrong theories of Newton and Albert Einstein existing were among the few nonsensical statements made at this Congress.
What had been once a gathering for country’s most reputed scientific minds has now become a platform for pseudoscientific beliefs based on mythology.
On Friday, Andhra University vice-chancellor G Nageswara Rao, a professor of inorganic chemistry, claimed that Kauravas from the Indian mythological epic Mahabharata were born using stem cell technology.
#WATCH: GN Rao,Vice-Chancellor Andhra University at Indian Science Congress y'day in Jalandhar:How come Gandhari gave birth to 100 children?Stem cell research was done 1000 yrs ago in this country,we had 100 Kauravas from one mother because of stem cell&test tube-baby technology. pic.twitter.com/C9nlaYwB7p
— ANI (@ANI) January 5, 2019
While ‘Ravana’ from the Ramayana had 24 types of aircraft with Sri Lanka having airports at that time.
Giving an explanation on his beliefs, Rao went on to explain evolution and human civilization while talking about the Dasavatara or 10 incarnations of Vishnu.
Another Scientist K J Krishnan, working at a centre in Tamil Nadu, claimed theories of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were wrong and would be disproved while gravitational waves would soon be renamed as ‘Narendra Modi waves’ and the gravitational lensing effect in physics would be renamed as ‘Harsh Vardhan effect’.
He also claimed that electricity and magnetism were the same phenomena.
Previously, in a Mumbai session of the Congress in the year 2015 Anand J Bodas, principal of a pilot training school in Kerala and Ameya Jadhav, lecturer at a Mumbai junior college, claimed ancient Indians had invented aircraft that could fly in multiple directions and had even reached other planets.
They went on to cite a reference of a text known as the ‘Vaimanika Shastra’, which has descriptions and some diagrams of what have been claimed to be ancient aircraft.
They claimed the text were written by the Vedic sage Bharadwaja and dated to 1904 but however scientists have concluded that those designs were unrealistic and such aircraft could not have achieved flight.
Addressing delegates at the session, Union science and technology minister Harsh Vardhan claimed that ancient Indian mathematicians had discovered the Pythagoras theorem “but very gracefully allowed the Greeks to take the credit”.
The Indian Science Congress Association expressed shock over these unscientific statements.
“I feel very sad about the type of things he presented before the children. I had told our team to keep a check and that nothing unscientific should be spoken about from the stage. It is shocking when a person of the stature of a state university VC speaks like this,” said ISCA general president Manoj Kumar Chakrabarti, a biologist.
“All the abstracts of the papers to be presented at the sessions were scrutinised properly. The research papers were all above board and had no unscientific claims. However Rao came just for a talk at the Children’s Congress. The speech was not vetted as it must have been assumed that a vice-chancellor could give an inspiring talk to the children. I will now have to check how Rao got invited to give the lecture and whether there was a hint of what the contents of it would be,” Chakrabarti added.
ISCA general secretary Premendu P Mathur said, “Science is based on citation, logical explanation and experimentation. Had I been there, I would have questioned him about it. One should have asked him for evidence.”
But Mr Rao stood by his claims. “Ramayana and Mahabharata are not mythology, but history. Because we don’t understand it today, we can’t say that it’s not science,” he told TOI.
“I stated that now test tube baby and stem cell technology are known and probably Kauravas were born through a similar mechanism. I am relating present-day science with what happened during the Mahabharata period. Otherwise how could there be 100 sons from a single mother. About Ravana, if he had aircraft there must have been infrastructure and fuel for it,” Rao had told.