IN an article ‘Neutrinos and Angels’ he wrote for a national daily, Prof Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of Pakistan’s leading scientists, quotes the late Carl Sagan, America’s well-known astronomer, astrophysicist, and science communicator.
Sagan told Bible Belt Americans: “Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonise about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us — then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.”
These habits of thought Dr Hoodbhoy describes as the “cancerous growth of claptrap masquerading as science”. He further advises Pakistanis “to listen again, and yet again to” Sagan. How right he is.