Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Qs people asked me on science and my replies to them - part 167

Q: What is the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?

Krishna: An epidemic occurs when a disease affects a greater number people than is usual for the locality or one that spreads to areas not usually associated with the disease. A pandemic is an epidemic of world-wide proportions.

When an infectious disease starts to spread, experts can use several terms to describe this. An outbreak is an unexpected number of cases. It can be limited to a single community. It might even be just one case. Or it can spread across countries. It can last just a few days or persist for years.

In March 2014, the World Health Organization reported an outbreak of Ebola in west Africa. Then the disease spread to several countries. Now it was as an epidemic. Epidemic diseases spread rapidly and infect many people.

Some diseases spread to infect many people in countries over several continents. These are known as pandemics. Ebola never reached pandemic status because it was confined to one region of Africa. And pandemics of new diseases are rare. But those rare cases can be devastating since no one is immune to an illnesses that has never before infected people.

Influenza spreads around the world every year in a pandemic. A very bad influenza pandemic developed in 1918 and 1919. It spread to an estimated 500 million people. That was roughly one in every three people alive at that time. This pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people.

More clear expalantion (1):

Outbreak:

Small, but unusual.

By tracking diseases over time and geography, epidemiologists learn to predict how many cases of an illness should normally happen within a defined period of time, place and population. An outbreak is a noticeable, often small, increase over the expected number of cases.

Imagine an unusual spike in the number of children with diarrhea at a daycare. One or two sick kids might be normal in a typical week, but if 15 children in a daycare come down with diarrhea all at once, that is an outbreak.

When a new disease emerges, outbreaks are more noticeable since the anticipated number of illnesses caused by that disease was zero. An example is the cluster of pneumonia cases that sprung up unexpectedly among market-goers in Wuhan, China. Public health officials now know the spike in pneumonia cases there constituted an outbreak of a new type of coronavirus, now named SARS-CoV-2.

As soon as local health authorities detect an outbreak, they start an investigation to determine exactly who is affected and how many have the disease. They use that information to figure out how best to contain the outbreak and prevent additional illness.

Epidemic:

Bigger and spreading.

An epidemic is an outbreak over a larger geographic area. When people in places outside of Wuhan began testing positive for infection with SARS-CoV-2 (which causes the disease known as COVID-19), epidemiologists knew the outbreak was spreading, a likely sign that containment efforts were insufficient or came too late. This was not unexpected, given that no treatment or vaccine is yet available. But widespread cases of COVID-19 across China meant that the Wuhan outbreak had grown to an epidemic.

Pandemic:

International and out of control.

In the most classical sense, once an epidemic spreads to multiple countries or regions of the world, it is considered a pandemic. However, some epidemiologists classify a situation as a pandemic only once the disease is sustained in some of the newly affected regions through local transmission.

To illustrate, a sick traveler with COVID-19 who returns to the U.S. from China doesn’t make a pandemic, but once they infect a few family members or friends, there’s some debate. If new local outbreaks ensue, epidemiologists will agree that efforts to control global spread have failed and refer to the emerging situation as a pandemic.

Terms are political, not just medical

Epidemiologists are principally concerned with preventing disease, which may be fundamentally different than the broader concerns of governments or international health organizations.

The WHO has declared only two pandemics in history - for influenza in 1918 and for influenza H1N1 in 2009. For weeks, epidemiologists like me have been calling the coronavirus a pandemic. From an epidemiological perspective, the WHO’s declaration is overdue. As of March 11, the official numbers count an excess of 120,000 cases in at least 114 countries. Eight countries, including the U.S., have more than 1,000 cases each, and community spread has been documented in several U.S. states.

Pandemic is the highest level of global health emergency and signifies widespread outbreaks affecting multiple regions of the world. However, the WHO statements remain hopeful that the pandemic can be controlled and the damage minimized by taking immediate aggressive steps.

The formal declaration of COVID-19 or any other infectious disease as pandemic tells governments, agencies and aid organizations worldwide to shift efforts from containment to mitigation. It has economic, political and societal impacts on a global scale, and the WHO takes extreme care when making this determination.

This formal declaration needn’t incite fear or cause you to stockpile surgical masks. It doesn’t mean the virus has become more infectious or more deadly, nor that your personal risk of getting the disease is greater. And it doesn’t mean that efforts to fight COVID-19 are being abandoned. But it is an historical event.

Q: Who is an expert in science?

Krishna: A person who gained genuine scientific knowledge at the highest level by following science’s real rules and can use this knowledge creatively and systematically to solve problems the world is facing.

Please follow the space Science Communication on quora for genuine scientific knowledge.

Q: Why do people fall for fake science news?

Krishna: Because fake (bogus, pseudo, sham, phoney) science news shows you ‘what you want to see’ most of the time. It interacts with your brain’s reward centres in a positive way!

For instance you love your culture and traditions. You adore your religion. If some people try to authenticate them using science, you feel ‘more proud’. It boosts your ego and jingoism. You upvote, like and share it enthusiastically. Social networks that are more homogenous are particularly ripe for misinformation, as the risk for acceptance of false claims can be heightened when false information is more visible and more socially rewarded when shared—experts have referred to this phenomenon as an "echo-chamber." You refuse to listen to people who counter it and think they are your enemies. This is because of motivated reasoning.

Reason for falling for fake science is multifactorial—there are many reasons at the individual, group, and societal levels of analysis.

Inability to recognise misinformation and a lack of motivation to recognise such misinformation is the main cause.

Fake science news can be particularly time-consuming to get to the bottom of. It is also extremely difficult to un-believe what you think is truth. Critical Thinking is highly taxing on the brain. Acquiring genuine knowledge is a tough task. With respect to ability, this means that both limited ability to evaluate biases in media and limited scientific understanding can be part of the problem.

There is a disconnect between the scientific consensus and particular pockets of public opinion on topics ranging from vaccine safety to the treatment of mental health disorders and from evolution to climate change. Everyone wants to win their argument in every possible way and promote it using bogus science.

The psychological discomfort known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ can occur when one reads facts that are inconsistent with one’s world-view. So you refuse the things that you think go against your beliefs. And genuine science is one that causes this mental discomfort to most people who cannot accept evidence based facts that can remove them from their comfort zone.

People who put more faith in their ability to use intuition to assess factual claims than in their reasoning skills are more likely to support conspiracy theories.

The internet and structure of social networks themselves can assist the spread of misinformation, as some false beliefs could be perceived by people as more prevalent in a network than they are in reality. Social networks make fake news spread faster without giving time to people to think much about it before sharing it. This issue is further made prominent by the fact that human and machine-bots do exist and can influence and exploit such visibility of false claims.

And at an even higher level of analysis, some vested interests can be motivated to shape what information is disseminated to the public suppressing facts and cherry picking things they want to spread. They play with emotions of people which is a sure way to hit the bull’s eye.

Unless a person is highly motivated to acquire genuine knowledge and use it for critical analysis, he cannot escape from the clutches of fake science.

I wrote on how to identify fake science news : How to trust science stories: A guide for common man

Q: Is science there even if there's no conscious act/intent of experimentation and research?

Krishna: Yes! There are two aspects to science.

One: The scientific principles with which this universe came into existence (to atheists), or created (to theists) and run by it.

Two: The process with which we study this universe.

Usually people take only the second aspect into consideration while dealing with science. But the truth is, without scientific principles, this universe in which we live, wouldn't have come into existence in the first place. Only when the scientific principles based universe came into existence, the consequences like galaxies, stars, planets, origin of life, its evolution, human beings and the study of the universal principles became a reality.

Scientists are finding things because they exist in the universe. They are studying the principles that govern this universe and discovering things because they are already there. These things don’t need human existence or their systematic study to be there. Without life several worlds can subsist.

Einstein asked an interesting Q: Can the moon exist even if I am not looking at it?

It can, so do all the ‘scientific’ things that made it a reality like energy, atoms, matter, gravity.

Some argue that these are natural principles and not scientific in nature. But they are now called scientific principles because - our universe is a “grand book” written in the language of science (Galileo used the word mathematics instead of science). In other words, this universe is science (scientific principles) based and science-run. When this universe cannot exist without science, you cannot separate one from the other.

The Sun shines because of the energy produced by nuclear fusion whether human beings exist or not to study it. So do galaxies and universe.

Remove science from the universe, it just ceases to exist.

Q: Can you tell me the science behind some of the common rituals in Hinduism?

Krishna: Nobody can do that because there is no science behind the rituals of any religion. Only culture and traditions are responsible for the emergence and continuation of these rituals.

If anybody tries to explain them in scientific terms, that becomes pseudo-science, not genuine science.

Don’t try to create and propagate pseudo-science which the scientists in this part of the world are fighting like hell.

Q: How is India's research project named Quantum-Enabled Science and Technology ( QuEST)?

Krishna:

Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuST)

Broad Objectives of QuST: • Development and demonstration of quantum computers. • Development and demonstration of quantum communication & cryptography. • Development of quantum-enhanced and inspired technology. • Development of advanced mathematical quantum techniques, algorithms and theory of quantum information systems.

https://dst.gov.in/sites/default/files/QuST%20-%20CFP1.pdf

India’s Department of Science & Technology has set up a program called Quantum-Enabled Science & Technology (QuEST). As a part of the program, it will invest a sum of Rs 80 crore in a span of three years to facilitate research in this field. In what is being described as the Phase 1 of India’s quantum computing program, the country will be laying out the basic infrastructure that is needed to promote research in this field. The government believes this will help in improving the state of national security as quantum-level encrypted information becomes a common communication standard.

It just is to make (a device or system) operational or activate using quantum technology or just building quantum computers in India. Using quantum computing (Quantum Computing is the use of quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform computation) is a phenomenon where a quantum computer solves a problem that a classical computer practically can’t.

It just is what it says. Or Just words jargon juggle to make all about it more attractive. :)

Q: What are the pros and cons of not being superstitious?

Krishna:

The pros : You live a fear-free life. You no longer live in a cage of harassment and mental torture.

You become strong and courageous.

Cons: None!

Q: Why do we believe in superstitions? Because we are afraid of something wrong happening?

Krishna: Believing in and following superstitions are somewhat a psychological universal tendency connected with high chaos and low confidence.

During hard times, when people think they don't have any control over the situation they are in, they again become more irrational and tend to see non-existent patterns in unrelated pictures.

Yes, throughout uncertain times, when stress, risk and death are involved, people tend to depend on external emotional strength and confidence boosters. And these are also the situations where people are highly vulnerable and get exploited by Godmen, religious zealots, cheats etc.

Science's rules are unyielding, they will not be bent in any way fo...

Science and superstitions : How rational thinking can make you work...

Burning Q: Why are more and more young people who claim they are mo...

Superstitions don't have any science behind them!

Superstitions

Q: Is there any scientific evidence to the claim that the towers of temple functions as a medium to capture the positive energy present in the atmosphere?

Krishna: No, there is no scientific evidence.

What is positive energy in the atmosphere? It just is people’s wild imagination!

It is all in the mind.

People say temples have positive atmosphere.

They also say grave yards have negative atmosphere.

It affects your mind.

So you feel the same way when you visit a temple or a graveyard.

But if you have a critical mind, you can think in other ways too.

Isn’t cheating at temples by priests by promising strange things a negative aspect?

Likewise if you can learn life’s philosophy at a graveyard which can have a very positive effect on you. Like this: ULTIMATE TRUTH

Come out of these illusions. You are what your brain (mind) perceptions are and what it dictates. That’s all.

I have an interesting story on this: A person used to go to his office everyday using one rough road. It was a short cut to his office from his home and he was happy to use it for several years. But one day somebody told him there used to be a grave yard there a few years back. Since that day, the man used to get frightened whenever he passed a certain area on the road. He would panic, feel strange presence, hear voices, and run till he reached his home. Finally he felt so scared, he stopped using the road.

He used the same road happily for years without any incident. But what happened suddenly? This happened: Somebody planted the graveyard story. It made all the difference to his mind.

So?!

Q: Why does science not accept Indian spiritual knowledge?

Krishna: Science does not accept anything that doesn’t have evidence.

Spiritual knowledge that tallies with reality is accepted (like this: Science and Spirituality ) but not the ones that just have a base in imagination and far away from truth.

You shouldn't reason backward from belief to evidence because that will subject you to numerous cognitive biases and you risk fooling yourself about the nature of reality.

All of us are subject to the psychological forces at play when it comes to choosing between facts and beliefs when they do not mesh. In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

The path of evolutionary enlightenment is one of ego-transcendence that is a means to a higher end, to open up some space within the self – space for evolution to occur. Being inspired by the idea of conscious evolution is one thing, while actually engaging in the process of evolution is something else altogether. But within themselves people are not free. They are trapped in psychological hang-ups and attachments, with little or no space for that which is new. Their minds are not liberated, and their choices and actions are still being shaped by unconscious adherence to values and perspectives that have nothing to do with being a liberated vessel for the evolution of consciousness and culture. Merely being inspired by the potential for conscious revolution does not automatically give us access to the fearless inner freedom to actualize that potential. In order to find that freedom, to open up that space for new, it is essential that you liberate yourself to a significant degree from your personal fears and desires and your culturally conditioned values. This inner freedom is not different from the goal of traditional enlightenment where freedom is an end itself. Ideally, freedom becomes the foundation from which to engage in conscious evolution. You must disentangle yourself, free yourself from your deeds, your history, culture that is entangled in beliefs and personal ego.
That empty space or a clean slate will become the ultimate source and wellspring of new awakening thoughts, their evolution which finally leads to enlightenment.

Science and Spirituality

Q: Why is there less criticism of the pseudo-scientific traditional Chinese Medicine compared to similar criticism of homeopathy?

Krishna: Because people know less about Chinese traditional medicines than Homeopathy. Moreover, less research ‘is done on the former medicines in the outside world (outside to China) than homeopathic ones. Outside of China very few people use Chinese traditional medicines. Once they spread to other areas too, I am sure more and more people will do research on them and tell the world about them.

Without conducting genuine research, you cannot mark anything as pseudo-science.

Q: What are some things that nature has done better than science?

Krishna: Do you think nature is different from science? Then think again.

This universe and everything in it is based on scientific principles which run them.

When nature is completely dependent on science and collapses without it, it cannot even exist without science, leave alone doing something better than science.

We are only mimicking science based nature and are trying to exploit our knowledge about it. That ‘s all!

Q: Which is better, Indian old science or modern science?

Krishna: The words ‘Indian old science’ sounds odd. Because science is universal in nature.

Anyway I understood what you meant.

Modern science is the best because it has various checks and balances to outsmart human weaknesses like biases, fallacies, distortions and other thinking inadequacies which is vital to understand the universe as it is than how we would like it to be.

Critical Thinking

Scientific Thinking

Q: Do we need a scientific method for every experiment?

Krishna: Modern science is the best because it has various checks and balances to outsmart human weaknesses like biases, fallacies, distortions and other thinking inadequacies which is vital to understand the universe as it is than how we would like it to be.

That is why scientific method is a must to get knowledge otherwise science (the study with which we understand this universe) becomes a religion - just based on faith and belief, not on evidence based facts, distorting our understanding. We might never be able to get our facts right without scientific method.

Critical Thinking

Scientific Thinking

Q: Is scientific research really fake?

Krishna: What?! There are more people who are honest and don’t fake things.

And, this is more important, there is a thing called scientific method to put a check on things like this.

Peer review puts a tight leash on fake research.

Not all science has gone awry. Majority of the people in the field are honest. I think here some are using only a few problem areas as examples to malign science.

Agreed there are grey areas in science - recently several of the scientific bodies have accepted this and decided to take corrective steps. That is the beauty of science. You accept your mistakes, agree to get corrected, and actually take steps to right the wrongs. Science and scientists are not rigid but are very open-minded. It is that modest, self-correcting principle which makes science worthy of our trust.

Read this article where I discussed in detail why people should trust science : Standing Up For Science : Showing Reasons Why Science Should Be Tru...

Q: Can I see satellites from the earth with binoculars?

Krishna: I had seen several of them with my own naked eyes without binoculars or any other aids. We have a house on the outskirts of our city (Hyderabad, India) and stayed there for some years when I was young. The skies there used to be very clear as there wasn’t any light pollution then. We used to sleep on the terrace during nights looking at innumerable stars. It was a perfect canvas picture of the night sky.

During one of our summer holidays I was playing with my sister and cousins on the terrace when suddenly one of my cousins shouted, ‘Look, a star is moving’. We all watched it with bated breath. It was just like any other star, but moving. It just took about five minutes to move from one side of the sky to the opposite side and disappear. Had somebody told me you can watch a star moving in the sky, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I had seen it with my own eyes!

Since then I had seen several ‘such stars’ moving because I used to wait for them and watch very carefully every night. They didn’t disappoint me because atleast once in a month they used to appear (then there weren’t many like we have now). I also noted down time, direction and and how much time each one took to cross the sky from one end to the other and sent to one of the science magazines published in India asking the scientists to clarify why ‘stars were moving’ with such a speed in the night sky.

When they sent a reply to me, I was pleasantly surprised because they told me what I watched were actually satellites and not stars! They appreciated me a lot and gave me a full year subscription of the magazine free of cost!

You can see satellites because they reflect the sun light like the moon does.

Oh, how I miss those sightings now because I live in the middle of the city and don’t get to see those ‘beautiful stars moving in the night sky’ anymore!!!

Yes, you too can see these cute little satellites moving across the sky if you can avoid light pollution.

Q: If spontaneous human combustion isn't real, what actually happened in these instances?

Krishna:

While this page Spontaneous human combustion - Wikipedia gives a detailed view, I will also now tell a story about an interesting thing happened last Diwali in my home. It ‘s about ‘spontaneous bag combustion’. :)

I suddenly smelt some plastic burning on Diwali night at about 8 pm. I went around my home but couldn’t find any thing burning. When I opened the front door I saw the plastic bags we tied to the door handle (for the milk boy to drop milk sachets) burning. I immediately put out the fire but couldn’t find a fire source there. Then how did they catch fire inside the corridor of our apartment building? I stood in the corridor in front of my front door for some time to investigate. Then after five minutes, I saw some sparks coming inside through the window of staircase wall. This happened for a few seconds and stopped. This happened again and again. The sparks were almost invisible as the lights were on. I went to the terrace and found some people of our apartment building bursting crackers there. When I told them what happened they refused to believe me ( I will tell you later why). Then I told some of them to burst crackers and some to follow me to see things with their own eyes. Only when they saw what ‘s happening with their own eyes, they believed me.

Our common space is a closed one surrounded by walls of flats on two sides, lift shaft on one side and steps on the fourth side. The wall of the fourth side has some windows for ventilation. One side of the window on each floor faces steps that go up and one side faces steps that go down. Just adjacent to our building, very close to it, there is another building covering the wall. It is not possible for outside cracker sparks to come inside because that adjacent building covers it. Only the sparks coming down from our terrace can enter the window … this is very important … because of the wind flow patterns and its dynamics (wind tunnel effect (1*). While the steps that go upward prevent the sparks from entering the upstairs corridor, the steps that go downward towards our floor allow them to reach inside the corridor. Because of the position of up-going steps, these sparks can’t reach the flats that are opposite to ours. Because of down -going steps and forceful wind patterns, these sparks coming down from the terrace not only entered the corridor through the window but also crossed - in a parallel position- the length of one flat adjacent to mine and reached my flat door and caused fire!

When I investigated and explained all this, people were dumb-struck.

So you have to have knowledge to understand what can happen and how it can happen to explain things. Otherwise you think some ‘miracle’ happened because of some unknown force. It remains a ‘mystery’. And ‘myths’ start circulating.

This ‘s what happens in these instances of spontaneous human combustion. Instead of a plastic bag if I was standing in the corridor , near my flat door wearing synthetic clothes, I would have caught fire!

Please follow the space Science Communication on quora for science information.

Footnotes:

1. The science of wind tunnels - where and why those harsh winds strik...

Q: Does science come from religion or does religion come from science?

Krishna: Religion is understanding of working of our universe gone awry because it is primitive in nature.

Science (the study with which we try to understand our universe) adopted a thing called ‘scientific method’ to stop it going the religious way as it is advanced.

Both work in different and opposite ways.

Why do you want to establish a relationship between them?

Q: In this age of information, how do I make out whether a given piece of information is genuine or fake?

Krishna: It takes a lot of training and experience to differentiate between genuine and fake information.

I wrote on How to trust science stories( A guide for common man).

Click on the link and find out how you can do it.

There is a video that gives some tips ‘How to separate fact and fiction online’ (you tube link is not working so I gave another link that works): Lab scientists versus internet scientists

Q: Is spiritual progress better than academic progress?

Krishna: :If you can’t progress academically, yes, you can go the spiritual way :)

Jokes apart, this question ‘s asked with an intention to stress spiritual progress is better than an academic one.

But like a person of science, I would say, you need science to go the right spiritual path! Like this: Science and Spirituality

Q:Who benefits the most from pseudosciences?

Krishna :Astrologers, fake doctors who deal with body cleansing, and other false cures, alternate medical practitioners like homeopaths, fake godmen with levitation tricks, dowsers, creationists, parapsychologists, beauticians, … the list can go on and on …

As long as suckers exist, cheaters cheat.

Q: If intelligent people are likely to have low confidence, then why was Richard Feynman very confident in his lectures?

Krishna: Intelligence and low confidence? Okay, I understood your point.

The smarter someone is -- in the sense of being awake and aware, attuned to their surroundings and curious about the wider world -- the more humble they tend to be. That is not equal to low confidence.

One reason so many smart and talented people doubt themselves is that they know the world is vast and their own knowledge is limited. They may have terrific experience and incredible judgement, but they also know that they'll never know everything there is to know in this world.

But, this is very important, even if they know only 1% of all that there is to know, intellectuals know how to use it to the maximum levels. They also know that most people around them don’t even have half of their knowledge and can’t use it creatively like they do.

That gives tremendous confidence to them.

Q: Is the Corona virus an example of the result of bad karma done by the affected people?

Krishna: Oh, come on. Take a ‘saint with all the good karma’ to the Wuhan region and see if he or she doesn’t get affected.

Science’s rules don’t get bend for anybody or anything. Good or bad people will all equally get affected if you don’t take precautions. Period.

All people, without any exceptions, can get infected and only people whose biology can overcome the infection can survive.

I am a microbiologist and I can vouch for that. Stop living in ancient times.

Q;I saw a white light (7:30pm) without any shape at night. My neighbor saw it too (1AM). It was moving so so fast on the ground in 2sec covered corners of the field. What could it be?

Krishna: Without more details, it is difficult to tell just by your description. But there are some descriptions about such lights.

The Hessdalen light most often appears as a bright white or yellow or red light of unknown origin standing or floating above the ground level. Sometimes the light can be seen for more than one hour. Sometimes the light moves with enormous speed, or sometimes just swayed to and fro with almost zero speed and it may sometimes just stand still in mid air. Some gives the hypothesis that the light might be ionized iron dust. This light has been sighted in many parts of the world.