Scientists’ societal role sparks debate at HLF 2026. Experts weigh in on authority, trust, and responsibility in public discourse. Session confronts the fraught relationship between scientific authority and public trust, Gayatri Musanam reports.
On a Saturday afternoon at Sattva Knowledge City, three voices gathered to dissect one of the most pressing questions facing modern democracies: What role should scientists play in society beyond their laboratories? The session “Science and Society,” moderated by Tejah Balantrapu, brought together theoretical physicist Suvrat Raju and materials scientist Satyanarayana Bheesette for a conversation that ranged from the philosophical foundations of scientific authority to the bitter political battles over India’s nuclear policy and the ill-fated India-based Neutrino Observatory.
What emerged was not a simple prescription for “better science communication” but a profound examination of how scientists have failed their public responsibilities, how that failure breeds distrust, and why the stakes of that distrust extend far beyond any single project or controversy.
Beyond the Lab
Raju opened by acknowledging the obvious ways scientists engage with society—through the social impact of their research and through science communication. But he wanted to focus on something “often underappreciated”: what scientists can contribute outside their direct areas of expertise.
In India, he noted, scientists have contributed meaningfully through people’s science movements focused on cultivating “scientific temper”—a uniquely Indian constitutional principle that enjoins all citizens to develop rational, evidence-based thinking. “This is also something that scientists have done,” Raju observed, pointing to a tradition of scientist-activists who’ve worked to combat superstition and promote rational inquiry.
But then came his central critique: “There is one more aspect though which I feel we should discuss and this is an aspect in which I feel scientists in India have been sorely lacking.” That aspect is intervention in contentious societal issues where powerful corporate or state interests clash with the interests of ordinary people—debates over nuclear energy, intellectual property rights, artificial intelligence policy.
“Even scientists who are not directly working on these fields still have the tools and also the leisure and the ability to be able to analyze some of these questions and participate,” Raju argued. “And that I feel is something that they really should do that perhaps we have not done as much.”
The Researcher’s Toolkit
Bheesette broadened the frame, suggesting we think not just of “scientists” but “researchers”—anyone engaged in methodological exploration seeking new knowledge, whether in science, arts, commerce, language, or dance. The commonality is rigorous methodology and the pursuit of discovery.
He emphasized the continuum from basic research through technology and engineering to practical application. “In my opinion this whole spectrum of something you create knowledge, starting from research, getting into maybe technology, getting into engineering and coming into the hands of a person, in some way they are all related to a large extent,” he explained.
Crucially, Bheesette argued that researchers are “looked up for getting certain logic or certain opinion about what is happening out there on the street. So it need not be confined only to find new theories and publishing… but also able to give suggestions to public at large, government at large and able to steer something which is good for the society.”
But he also offered an important caveat: science itself is often “a bit debatable, it is a bit growing, it is a bit depends on how you interpret the data.” Measurements have errors and biases. Theoretical work proceeds without experiments to constrain it. “Please keep in mind when I said that people look up to scientists for solutions outside science stream, this is the peril that one has,” he warned.
Pandemic as Case Study
The moderator pressed Raju on why scientists so often defer to dominant power structures despite science’s foundational principle of challenging authority. His response was damning.
Taking the pandemic as a concrete example, Raju described how “a very prominent set of establishment scientists was commissioned by the government to produce database models.” These scientists produced a paper claiming “we can mathematically show that the decisions taken by the Indian government have been optimal.”
“That was of course what the government wanted to hear. But later it led to very bad policy because these scientists who extolled the policies of the Indian government and extolled the lockdown later also said that we have crossed the worst of the pandemic before the second wave.”
This, Raju argued, was “clearly a violation of the scientific method.” More troubling still: “The scientists who did this didn’t face any consequences” within the scientific community. The implication was stark—institutional science in India has failed to police its own integrity when political pressure is applied.
Neutrinos and Nuclear Waste
The conversation turned to Bheesette’s area of direct experience: the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), a proposed underground particle physics facility that became mired in controversy and remains stalled today.
Bheesette provided essential background: neutrinos are “very, very, very tiny particles”—about a million times smaller than electrons, which themselves are minuscule. They’re the second most abundant particle in the universe after photons, produced by the sun, supernovae, nuclear reactors, and the Big Bang itself. “There are still large number of those neutrinos which are produced 14 billion years ago around us,” he explained, adding reassuringly that “they don’t do any damage to you because they are very, very non-interacting particles.”
In 1965, Indian scientists working in the Kolar Gold Fields—deep underground mines near Bangalore—made a pioneering discovery of atmospheric neutrinos, opening an entirely new field of physics. The INO was meant to build on this legacy with a modern facility for cutting-edge neutrino research.
But the project faced fierce opposition. The initial site was denied environmental clearance during the UPA-2 government. The site was moved, but opposition continued.
Bheesette shared a telling anecdote from an outreach talk near the proposed site: “An old gentleman sitting at the back said, ‘Sir, one of the big problem why INO is being opposed by people locally is that the neutrino starts with a word called nu, which also, you know, neutron also starts with a word called nu. I don’t think most people here can make a distinction between a neutron and a neutrino.'”
The linguistic confusion bred deeper misunderstandings. “People were so confident, quote unquote confident, that we are actually building this nuclear lab only to store the nuclear waste that is getting generated at the Kodankulam plant,” Bheesette recounted. Some locals believed neutrinos were “sharp knife objects” that could penetrate human bodies.
Bheesette acknowledged this as partly a communication failure: “Maybe we did not do quite well maybe we should have been a little more careful the language that we use.” The word “language” meant both the terminology and literally speaking in Tamil to local communities.
But he insisted the initial phase of opposition stemmed from “genuine sort of misunderstanding.” The real problem came later, when “other characters enter the scene who are not genuine local people with misunderstanding about what we do”—organized opposition with motives beyond scientific concerns. “It is like a person who is acting, sleeping and you know you are trying to wake him up,” he said with evident frustration.
How Dishonesty Poisons the Well
Raju interjected with the crucial missing piece: why were people so distrustful in the first place?
“I was in a kind of unusual position there because I felt this was an important experiment that would have scientific value. I also happen to know many of the people’s movements that in fact were opposing this project.”
He tried to persuade these movements that the INO posed no threat. “It was very hard for me to even persuade them that something like neutrinos doesn’t have military implications. It can’t be used for defense. It can’t be used as a new kind of weapon. There was no radioactive waste that was going to be produced.”
But here was the problem: “At that time there was also other debates that were happening most prominently on the Kudankulam nuclear plant and in that debate the position that the scientific community took was very disingenuous.”
The then-chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission had stated publicly—”and you can just Google this,” Raju emphasized—that “the chance of an accident is one in infinity.”
“One in infinity.” Not one in a million, or one in ten million, but a mathematical impossibility—a statement so absurd it betrayed either profound dishonesty or contempt for public intelligence.
“When you say that in one case, which is clearly a false statement that people can see, and then you make a true statement in the other case which is look the neutrinos can’t be used for weapons and people don’t trust you because they say look here you were saying the chance of an accident was one in infinity now you say something how do I know you are telling the truth.”
The lesson was clear: “Not just that people are being irrational but people see the fact that scientists sometimes are betraying their trust. And so then they don’t trust you at other times.”
Nuclear Energy in 2026
The discussion turned to current events that many in the audience might not have followed: Parliament’s recent passage of the Shanti Act, which fundamentally rewrote India’s nuclear liability framework.
Raju explained with precision: “Apart from allowing private participation, the main clause of the law is what to do if there is a nuclear accident.” The law now indemnifies multinational suppliers completely and caps the liability of Indian private corporations at approximately 400 million dollars—”a thousand times smaller than the kind of damage that a nuclear accident can cause.”
And what has the scientific community said about this law? “The answer is nothing. If anything, the scientific community might go out and say, well, you know, you shouldn’t be afraid.”
The Department of Atomic Energy might dismiss concerns as “unreasoned fear of radiation,” Raju noted, but “the criticism of this law, this framework is not coming because there is an unreasoned fear of radiation. There is a genuine criticism of the fact that this law is creating a moral hazard.”
His logic was devastatingly simple: “The industry says the chance of an accident is 1 in 10 million reactors. Great, then go ahead and accept liability. Accept 10 times the liability because there is no chance of an accident… If you tell me accept liability for the fact that God will strike this thing with a bolt of lightning, I’ll accept liability because I know it won’t happen.”
But the companies refuse to accept the risk. “Why should victims take the risk?” Raju demanded. “That’s the thing that scientists should point out because they can understand and analyze the data and see that this is the case.”
Risk, Reward & Who Bears the Burden
Bheesette offered a counterpoint, arguing for a more holistic view of technological risk. He cited aircraft crashes and their associated compensation, asking why nuclear reactors should be singled out. “Risk in some sense is involved in every aspect, especially the larger the technology you are making use of, there are also more possibilities of something going wrong.”
He suggested that excessive focus on nuclear accidents—stemming from “couple of accidents that happened in nuclear field”—might be distorting the discussion. All technologies carry risks proportional to their scale.
But Raju maintained the crucial distinction: “One difference between a nuclear accident and aircraft accident is aircraft accident causes in the end limited localized damage to the people over there and people in the aircraft. And a nuclear accident can cause much larger levels of damage.”
More fundamentally: “Who bears the risk? Do the people living near the nuclear plant have an option?” Those communities don’t choose to live with that risk. “It’s completely fair to say the company that was running the plant should go bankrupt because if we are risking our lives, they should also risk their assets. But the company makes a law saying we will not suffer loss and the multinational company which is even more powerful says we are not even responsible.”
Cutting Through the Clutter
When the moderator pressed on how citizens should navigate complex technical debates where experts disagree, Raju’s response cut to the heart of the matter.
“Once you cut through the clutter of this law, it’s very simple. The logic is there are corporate interests that don’t want to go bankrupt if there is an accident. And there are other companies who want to sell a reactor and don’t want to pay anything if there is an accident. They have enough influence that they can get laws passed to their benefit. There is no other logic.”
The responsibility of the scientific community, he argued, is precisely this: “to cut through the clutter. Once you do that, then I think the issue is very simple.”
This wasn’t about technical expertise in nuclear physics or risk modeling. It was about applying basic analytical tools—the ability to process data, read laws, understand logical implications—to expose the real interests at stake in policy debates disguised as technical questions.
Honesty as Foundation
As the session drew to a close, both speakers acknowledged the challenges but insisted on different fundamentals.
Bheesette emphasized the inherent uncertainties in science and the need for careful communication, particularly in local languages and accessible terminology. The INO experience showed that initial misunderstandings could be addressed through patient engagement—if done right and done early.
Raju insisted the deeper problem was institutional integrity. “It’s important for the scientific community to speak up in these times… with basic honesty and scientific integrity on these issues. If we were to do that, I feel that many other times when there are genuine issues, we would have a much easier time in communicating with people.”
“If we, on the other hand, just stay silent because there are very big, powerful corporations—we all know who those are—and there is a state which wants to do something and we are not willing to take a stance against that, then it comes back to hit us I feel at some point.”
The session ended with questions from an audience clearly engaged with these tensions, having watched two scientists wrestle honestly with the failures and responsibilities of their community.
What made this session remarkable was not its resolution of these tensions—there was no neat conclusion—but its unflinching examination of how scientific authority functions in society and how that authority has been squandered.
Raju and Bheesette disagreed on emphasis and perhaps on how to weigh competing risks, but they agreed on the fundamental problem: Indian scientists have too often served power rather than truth, and the public has noticed. Trust, once broken, is nearly impossible to rebuild with better PowerPoint presentations or clearer jargon-free explanations.
The session embodied the very values it called for—honest disagreement, willingness to acknowledge failure, and insistence that expertise carries responsibilities that extend far beyond publishing papers or securing grants. In a time when scientific authority faces challenges globally, these were uncomfortable but necessary truths, spoken in the open on a Saturday afternoon in Hyderabad.
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