Aniket Sule is a man who must pick his battles. Otherwise, as a scientist who likes to bust myths, this country can give him too much to do. Last year, when Union Minister Satyapal Singh famously said Darwin’s theory of evolution was “scientifically wrong”, it was Sule — a research fellow at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education at TIFR — who promptly filed a petition asking him to retract his statement. But, increasingly he finds that what prevails over fact in the land that gave birth to clinical minds such as Ramanujan is a potent cocktail of mythology and bad science fiction featuring Vedic flying machines, ancient missiles and gods with engineering skills.“Ridiculous” is how he describes the two notorious speeches at the recent Indian Science Congress (ISC) at Jalandhar, where Andhra University vice chancellor G Nageshwar Rao said that the Kauravas of the Mahabharata were born due to stem cell and test tube technologies while another speaker, K J Krishnan, dismissed the theories of physicists Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as wrong. “It’s not enough for scientists to ignore such ridiculous claims,” says Sule. “It’s important for us to tell the layman that these claims are not true.”This sense of duty is now brewing a steady myth-busting movement in India where scientists, academics and other groups like the Breakthrough Science Society (BSS) are resorting to hard data, petitions and marches to tame the rabidly mutating beast called ‘pseudo-science’.While Sule — who defines pseudo-science as “anything that uses scientific jargon but not the process of science”— recalls a 2001 move by then HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi to introduce astrology into university curriculums as the first state-backed attempt propagating pseudo-science, it is really in the last five years that political agendas have mixed with religious folklore and creative storytelling, making scientists despair.As Prof Jayanth Murthy, director, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, puts it: “I am not concerned about all the silly stories as science needs its crackpots to fuel it further. However, I am concerned about important people saying dumb things.” Bharat Ratna recipient Prof CNR Rao says he stays away from these science congresses. “I don’t go there, fearing my presence may endorse some of these claims. What’s worse is that such lectures are being delivered to children.”To UK-based science writer Angela Saini — whose new book ‘Superior: The Return of Race Science’ will touch upon the political nature of pseudo-science when it is published in India this year — such claims smack of “religious nationalism”. “When political figures make outlandish claims about ancient flying machines, they are relying on a false body of knowledge gleaned not from hard evidence but by misreading certain religious texts. The reason they do this is to whip up a sense of Hindu religious pride, to undermine the truth for their own political ends, not unlike the Nazis did in Germany in the early 20th century. It was dangerous then, and it is dangerous now,” says Saini, who sees no reason for Indians to resort to fake, unsubstantiated claims to have pride in their history. “India has a very strong place in global scientific history, as the birthplace for key mathematical ideas, metallurgical technologies and home to the sophisticated Indus Valley civilisation, which had weights and measures. It has been home to such great thinkers as Ramanujan and Bose,” she says.The problem is there are many urban, educated, working professionals who fall for the seductive conspiracy theories that mix history, science and legend. One major catalyst for this is WhatsApp. “Even those who don’t know how to separate chalk from cheese now believe they are experts because they have read WhatsApp forwards,” says Sule, who quietly saves a collection of such unverified WhatsApp science forwards to be used as material in his myth-busting workshops. He has also made it a point to attend gatherings such as a recent talk titled “Vaimanika Shastra’ (Aeronautical Science) in Mumbai, which was organised to glorify the contributions of ancient Indians to the world so that he can challenge the speakers. “We are never taught to question authority,” says Sule, explaining India’s impoverished scientific temper. This is partly why, along with fellow activists, Sule decided to announce August 20 as National Scientific Temper Day last year and even conducted talks across schools in Mumbai where students asked them questions such as: “Is it okay to cut your hair on Saturday?”There are also efforts such as Breakthrough Science Society of India’s March for Science — where people march every year to defend science and scientific outlook — which are part of the artillery against the war on pseudoscience.Its other sturdy weapon, of course, is hard data. In 2017, Alt News, a fact-checking website, launched a section on science in 2017 precisely to take on misinformation with evidence-based research. Poker-faced, this section forensically analyses everything from BJP MP Dr Subramanian Swamy’s tweets claiming that “admission of women in menstruation period in Sabarimalai was to protect the women from mutation from gravitational matrix” to AYUSH ministry’s promotion of magnet therapy to cure diseases.Sweden-based neuroscientist and science editor of Alt News, does not write about outlandish claims as that is "not impactful at all". Instead, she writes about stories that people rely on expert advice to differentiate between evidence-based science and pseudo science such as as the one tackling vaccine-related rumours for instance..“Every time there is a vaccination drive by the government, someone spreads rumours that it kills children or contains anti-fertility agents. These rumours can prove dangerous as vaccines promise immunity from a host of diseases,” says Shaikh.Predictably, fighting the good fight extracts its toll. “We know what happened to Dabholkar and Pansare, right?” says Sule, referring to the slain rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare and adding that he draws strength from TIFR’s supportive leadership. Despite the high stakes, though, the importance of intellectuals and other groups taking on pseudo-science cannot be understated. “If we can’t assert the facts then what can we do?” asks Saini. “Live in a world in which people think the Earth is flat?”