Finally the clouds are breaking up : Hannan An Inquiery into the truth

A few weeks ago I have written an article about a news in one of the leading Malayalam newspapers - Matrubhumi (read my article here - Hannan : An enquiry into the Truth!) .

The news was about a prodigy girl, who is appreciated by many well known scientists and graduated from NASA by the age of 14. However as I suggested in my previous article, the news was a scandal and a few days back Matrubhumi apologised that the news had some mistakes.


[photo extract from Matrubhumi Daily : 5th October 2009]

Another Malayalam Daily Janbhoomi, had the courage to delve into the inner details of the news and they have reported that the news is fake (read the story here).

However, the topic is a dead end now - many of the people still believe that the news is fake. But my question is that How a 14 year old girl can create such a big scandal to gain publicity ? and Why our media is so ignorant that they think that the readers can be fooled easily ? and What can be done to avoid such things from repeating ?

Well, my point is the news was not just the creation of a 14 year old school girl - it is intentionally created by someone clever (or clever fraud ?), so that they can get some sponsors for this girl - an easy way to make money, huh! - . And our media doesn't care what they publish. A little knowledge about science & some multimedia skills to create some fake certificates can help you achieve fame and money in a few days - that's what our media assures now.

The other question is - Why our media think that we can be fooled easily ?. The answer is they don't care about anyone, they no longer work for truth or justice, all they care is the circulation and the profit.

So what can be done ? I have a few suggestions, even though we have media watchdogs like The Hoot, they are not so effective. What we need is a crowd sourced Open Media Watchdog where people can discuss, criticise and rethink news published in all newspapers. The second thing is we need to investigate on such fraud news and find out who really works behind these news and sue them and punish them appropriately - so that these kind of incidents won't repeat. And we need to be aware that even the best news papers cannot be trusted (the same news appeared in most of the major newspapers including Indian Express - click to read).

And finally we need to train our Journalist to validate the news they get from various sources, to do that they need to be trained in using technologies like Internet and other communication facilities (A single phone call to the APJ's office might have prevented this catastrophic news, sadly that didn't happen in this case). Even setting up an in-house news validation group will certainly help our media increase reliability and quality.

Let us hope for a better future. Don't forget to write your comments and suggestions..

Hannan - An enquiry into the Truth !

I hope that many of you have seen the news in the Matrubhumi Daily (14th September 2009) - Front page (See the online version : http://bit.ly/2Iq2Rj , seems like Matrubhumi removed the online version today - 17 september 2009). The news is about a girl called Hannan Binth Hashim - a child prodigy on Astrophysics who is honoured by Nasa and other various Science and Technology Centres around the world for her exceptional works in the field of Astrophysics, She is said to have introduced to NASA by APJ Abdul Kalam.

After the news came in Matrubhumi yesterday, many of our ministers including M.A Baby and all called her and appreciated (thanks for their great mind), but how many of us dared to cross-check the news to see if it is true.

The same news was published in the Indian Express,The Indian express published it on 19th June 2009,page 5,second column. You can find the link here http://bit.ly/2Yu0Ta .

While the news in Indian express came out, I was glad to see an Indian child prodigy, and I have informed about this to some of my professors.To my shock, they have asked me to check the validity of the news and told me that it is a fake news.

Please see the result of my quick googling and research on this news. (Most of the European countries have something called Media Watch, an agency to criticise and verify the news, so most of the media people are conscious while making the news.Sadly, we don't have any such thing in India.).

Facts about the news

1 . There is nothing called American Institute of theoretical physics or American Journal of theoritical physics (The news says that she is publishing her works in that journal).

2. There is no sign of any reputed Science Journals or Magazines published about her theory yet (Do a simple google search, all you can find is the replicas of the news came in Indian express and nothing else like a Scientific paper or anything like that).

3. I couldn't find any proof of appreciation by APJ Abdul Kalam, Barak Obama or any other members of any Scientific Community.

4. Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology competition is only Open to United State nationals.

5. She is said to have presented papers and took lectures in various scientific communities, meetings and Institutes. Is there any video lecture or anything related to any of these. This is an information era - why couldn't I find anything in the Internet.

6. There is no information about a course offered by Nasa Space School available even in the official Nasa site - For-Students Site (checkout : http://bit.ly/AZrFX).

The Space School actually offers a 5 day workshop,The students will experience a 5 day engineering mission to land a rover on the surface of Mars ( Any interesting student team can participate : http://bit.ly/ejXiU ).

7. She is saying in one news that we don't have enough facilities to learn her subjects in India, checkout Indian Institute of Astrophysics (http://www.iiap.res.in/) and Indian Institute of Sciences (http://bit.ly/FRzaY).

8. Above all read the two news and one can find contradictions in the statements, that itself verifies the unautheticity of the news and how ignorant our media persons are.

9. And why Honorable APJ Abdul Kalam recommended her to NASA while we have ISRO here.

10. After all, see this old scandals about another Indian Child Prodigies.

http://bit.ly/1aniUS

http://bit.ly/lih07

http://bit.ly/3sc5Kp

11.The theory she is working on is expected to disprove Einstein, it is about the speed of light, she is trying to prove that the speed of light may vary, but this was suggested even before many years (See the link : http://bit.ly/4td9GV).

I am not personally against Hannan or her abilities, I do wish if there is a few original child prodigies from India.What I still don't understand is why media people are this much ignorant and what Hannans can gain from such fake media publicity ?

Please do check carefully before you believe anymore news in the media, and see how ignorant our media is. Let us hope for the best.

This article was published on 9/14/09 by Dharan P Deepak