Resources

Books and other resources for the curious

Science and Society in Ecology and Evolution

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – Jared Diamond
The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins
This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India – Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil
Survival Strategies: Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies – Raghavendra Gadagkar

Gender, Caste, Race, and Other Barriers in Sciences

What is Privilege? – A short experiment
Unconscious Bias Training
How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings – Sarah Cooper
Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment – Renny Thomas
Serious Men (Fiction) – Manu Joseph

Communicating Science

Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded – Joshua Schimel
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: On punctuation – Lynne Truss
A list of Social Science Research & Resources from the Alda Center for Communicating Science, Stony Brook U.

Learning R

R Cookbook – J D Long and Paul Teetor
R for Data Science – Wickham, Centinkaya-Runde & Grolemund

Self-Care

The Origins of You – Vienna Pharon
Body Keeps The Score – Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD

A source of trauma in the sciences

These graphs capture the stark reality of gender and caste distribution in the faculty at one of India’s premier research Institute, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), my alma mater, albeit this is a generic reality of India premier research Institutes. In the general population OBC+SC+ST are ~70% (not shown), but they make only 6% of faculty in IISc. Women represent only 17% of the total faculty at IISc, while some departments do not have a single woman faculty. Does one even ask for the numbers at the intersections of caste and gender? (Chakraborty, S., 2022 Dialogue, Dissent, Struggles: Chronicles from the Indian Institute of Science, in: [“Chakraborty, Ambedkar, S. and, P.”] (Eds.), Students Won’t Be Quiet. LeftWord Books, pp. 75–114.)