The scientific community in the English-speaking world publishes its research findings using technical and scientific English (naturally!). It has its own specialist vocabulary. Many words are exclusive for a particular technology as they are technical terms, also called ‘jargon”. Also, the inclusion in research papers of mathematical and statistical terms and calculations are important where they support the overall findings.

There is a whole array of specialist publications, journals, papers and letters serving the scientific community world-wide. These publications are by subscription only but can easily be found in university libraries upon request.

Preparation Before Starting Research

There is a standard procedure for a researcher to follow before any practical work is done. It is necessary to evaluate the current status of work in this field of research. This requires reading all the relevant, available literature, books, papers, etc., on this subject. Critical evaluation of this reading material enables the researcher to understand the current status of the research and any aspects of weakness or previous shortcomings. In this way the student can get ‘up to speed’ and in tune with the preceding research work done in this field. During this process new avenues for research and investigation may open up for research and investigation.

Reporting on research results is best when it is measurable and can be quantified. Figures mean a lot in the scientific world. Sizes, quantities, ranges of acceptance, figures of probability, etc., all are used to lend authority to new research findings.

Such writings are carefully crafted works of precision and clarity. Not a word is out of place. All words used are nuanced to fit exactly the meaning of what the authors of the paper wish to convey. No word is superfluous (= extra, not needed); all is well manicured to convey the message accurately to a knowledgeable, receptive reader.

STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) research topics these days rely heavily on statistics and the ‘design of experiments’ statistical approach to prove an argument and it is required that the researcher should be familiar and conversant with these statistical techniques of inquiry and evaluation in the effort to add the necessary weight to his or her findings.

Peer Review

Note that before a paper can be accepted for publication it must be submitted to a panel for peer review. This is where several experts in the subject or speciality form a panel to assess the work and approve or reject it. Careers depend on well-presented reports.

Personal Achievement

Academics quote the number of the research papers they have published with pride. They are the status symbols of personal achievement par excellence! And most importantly, these are used to help justify the continuation of funding for the upcoming academic year.

The Real Reason for the Importance of English World-wide

We are all much richer due to the investigations done in the English-speaking world by the investigative scientific community using English as a tool of communication. As a result, people from all around the world are using the internet to access these research findings thus establishing the English language as a major form of reliable information dissemination.

Foot-dragging by Sri Lanka

Sri Lankans should not exclude themselves from this process of knowledge creation and dissemination. Sri Lanka needs to enter this scientific world and issue its own publications in good English. Sri Lanka needs experts who have mastered this form of scientific communication and who can participate in the progress of science! In scientific research, the best progress in innovation, it seems, is when students can all collaborate. It is then that the best ideas develop and come out.

Work Opportunities

The most wonderful opportunities open up from time to time for graduates of the STEM subjects mainly in companies using modern technology. The reputation of Sri Lanka depends on having a horse in this race – quite apart from the need to provide suitable careers for its own population. People have ambitions and need to be able to rise up intellectually and get ahead. Intelligent people need the opportunity and space to develop their talents. Therefore, students in the STEM subjects need to be able to read, analyse and compare several different research papers, i.e., students need to have critical thinking skills – in English. Often, these skills have to be communicated. Students need to be able to achieve this high standard of English.

Students need to be able to put their thoughts on paper in a logical, meaningful way, their thoughts backed up by facts and figures according to the principles of the academic, research world. But even natural speakers of English have difficulties in mastering this type of English and doing analyses and critical thinking – therefore, it must be multiple times more difficult for Sri Lankans to master this specialised form of English. Therefore, special attention needs to be paid to overcoming this disadvantage.

In addition, the researcher needs to have knowledge of the “design of experiments,” and be familiar with everyday statistics, e.g., the bell curve, ranges of probability, etc.

How can this high-quality English (and basic stats) possibly be taught in Sri Lanka when most campuses focus on the simple passing of grammar exams or IELTS?

Over to you NIE, Maharagama!

Sri Lanka needs teachers with knowledge of this erudite, specialist form of English report writing supported by mathematical statistical “design of experiments” knowledge. Secondly, this knowledge has to be organised and systematised and imparted over a sufficient time period, years, sufficient for students with ability and maturity to become valuable members of the world-wide English- speaking research community. Over to you NIE, Maharagama!

Priyantha Hettige

In recent times there have been far too many road accidents most of which could have been prevented if punitive measures were taken in time. Innocent passengers riding buses, three wheelers, and cars have lost their lives as a result of such crashes.

The recent fatal accident where a SLTB bus plying from Kataragama to Kurunegala ran off the road and went down a 300-foot precipice at Gerendiella in Kotmale killing 23 passengers and injuring many more is a case in point.

According to one survivor who had crawled out of a window, the bus had been driven at excessive speed and the driver had suddenly applied the brakes and sent the bus careering down the pallang. In his sleepiness, the driver may have accidentally trod on the brake pedal causing this fatal accident.

The bus had been carrying 60 to 80 passengers at the time. When the wreck was lifted by a crane up on to the road, people wondered how some passengers escaped death as it was so badly damaged.

In my memory, this was the second SLTB bus that had veered off the road and gone down a precipice. The first was when a CTB bus similarly went down a precipice in Dowa, near Bandarawela in the last century. Fortunately, there were not this many deaths.

The worst bus accident before Kotmale was in 2005 when a bus was hit by a long-distance train at the level crossing in Polgahawela, due to the negligence of the driver who had tried to get across with the approaching train in sight!

It was good of the Speaker and the Deputy Minister of Transport to visit the scene of the accident in Kotmale, and hopefully they will instruct the SLTB management to take proper precautionary action to avoid accidents of this nature in the future.

The SLTB Depot Mangers should ensure that drivers assigned to drive long distance buses in the night have had a good rest during the day so that they do not feel drowsy on the road. It would also be good if such drivers are tested for drugs or inebriation.

It has always been a practice of the owners of wayside eating houses to serve the drivers and conductors liquor and a free meal to attract them to stop at their outlets for the passengers to have a meal or other refreshments. The SLTB management should occasionally get the flying squads to check this too.

At present, most recently recruited drivers of the SLTB are those who have driven private buses and cannot shed their reckless driving habits. This is quite in contrast to the old drivers of the then CTB who kept to the rules and drove carefully.

It is time now for the police to be deployed on various roads where people drive at excessive speed to check on the drivers’ papers and ascertain whether they are inebriated. This must be done continuously and the wrongdoers brought to book. The police can do this now as there will be no political interference as earlier. The police should be very strict with the drivers of private buses and school vans to see that they do not change lanes without signaling and drive at excessive speeds even within city limits.

It has become very difficult and hazardous for older drivers who stick to the rules and obey even unwritten laws such as giving way to the traffic on the right at crossroads and roundabouts; and those entering main roads from side roads in heavy traffic and giving way to pedestrians at crossings. The main culprits are the bus drivers, both SLTB and private, three-wheeler drivers and motor cyclists.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE

Each year, the anointed elite flew to Davos to witness Klaus Schwab’s pageantry—where lofty proclamations drowned out the unresolved crises of poverty, health emergencies, and food insecurity. They gathered in alpine luxury, more suited to honeymoons than humanitarian reckoning, to moralize about catastrophes unfolding continents away. The spectacle revealed not merely paradox, but a deliberate choreography of geopolitical theatre—where privilege cloaked itself in altruism and global suffering was repurposed as elite currency.

Klaus Schwab, the architect of this icy Olympus, the World Economic Forum’s omnipresent paterfamilias, has long styled himself as the cerebral messiah of stakeholder capitalism. With almost oracular cadence, he declared: “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, re-imagine, and reset our world.” It was the kind of proclamation that sounded benevolent to some and Machiavellian to others. To his admirers, he was a prophet of multilateralism and sustainable development; to his critics, a grandiose technocrat cloaked in the language of humanism, who sought not to dismantle the system of inequity but to re-brand it.

Schwab’s legacy, now embroiled in scandal and precipitous retreat, was always a palimpsest: the elegant prose of visionary change obscuring darker subtexts of elitism, opacity, and manipulation. The recent whistleblower allegations—detailing misuse of institutional funds, methodological tampering in flagship reports, and attempts to solicit a Nobel Peace Prize—have only validated the long-held suspicions of those who viewed Davos as a vaudeville of virtue signaling. The Financial Times called it a “downfall in Davos,” yet it is not merely the toppling of a man, but the implosion of a grand narrative that spanned five decades.

One cannot ignore the irony that the very man who exhorted the world to “build back better” is accused of bending institutional mechanisms to bolster personal prestige. That Schwab allegedly altered the methodology of the Global Competitiveness Report to curry favour with petulant governments speaks volumes—not only about his imperium within the WEF, but about the pliability of ‘truth’ within elite consensus. “Over the years I continued to engage with the methodology to improve and maintain the credibility of the report,” Schwab protested. But in the realm of epistemic governance, “engagement” too often becomes a euphemism for expedient distortion.

That Schwab’s decline coincides with his octogenarian twilight lends the entire episode a tragic Shakespearean air—Lear exiled from his castle not by storm or sword, but by memo. A figure who once dined with monarchs and ministers now pens rebuttals to anonymous emails and threatens defamation lawsuits. His supporters insist he is the target of “character assassination”; others call it karmic revelation. In his 1 April email to the trustees, Schwab remarked with characteristically self-assured solemnity, “It is evident that I do not have to strive any more to create a legacy.” And yet now, with his departure expedited and ignominy encroaching, that legacy appears less a monument and more a mausoleum.

Few remember that Schwab’s intellectual lineage was forged not merely in the groves of academia but in the grey spaces between policy, industry, and ideological hegemony. His 1971 book Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering proposed the then-novel idea that corporations ought to serve all stakeholders, not just shareholders. On the surface, this was prescient. But the WEF he built around that idea became a quasi-aristocracy of corporate nobles, where virtue was worn as adornment and seldom as burden.

He mastered the theatre of global benevolence, wrapping laissez-faire capitalism in the warm hues of inclusivity and green ambition. In Davos, climate activists mingled with oil executives, AI ethicists with surveillance capitalists. To attend was to be consecrated among the responsible elite—a spectacle of noblesse oblige, where the powerful confessed the sins of others while affirming their own salvific role.

Behind the curtains of this alpine symposium, Schwab reportedly centralized control, maintaining a grip so unrelenting that one senior WEF member remarked: “He should have left years ago, but he obviously couldn’t. I am sure he’ll fight tooth and nail.” That insight now reads as prophecy, as Schwab’s once-invulnerable façade disintegrates under the weight of new probes, internal dissent, and boardroom tremors.

To speak of Schwab without addressing the WEF’s governance is to narrate Hamlet without Denmark. The 2015 Swiss designation of WEF as an “international organization for public-private cooperation”—complete with tax privileges and special legal status—revealed not neutrality, but institutional sanctification of elite opacity. The requirement that a Schwab family member remain on the board perpetuates not merely nepotism, but a dynastic arrogance that belies the Forum’s democratic posturing. What began as an initiative for transnational dialogue became, over time, an ecclesiastic council for technocratic orthodoxy.

And still, despite these revelations, Schwab clings to the mythos of personal sacrifice: he waived bonuses, accepted below-market salaries, and saw his spouse offer unpaid labour. One is reminded of Talleyrand’s dictum: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” That Schwab, at the end, saw his predicament through the lens of personal martyrdom rather than institutional accountability is less surprising than it is depressingly emblematic.

Uncommonly recounted is Schwab’s fierce control over the Forum’s narrative architecture. Staff have long whispered of ghostwritten books produced under WEF auspices, generating royalties attributed to Schwab, marketing funded by the Forum, arguments constructed by its analysts. While commonplace in think tanks, the scale and lack of disclosure here were part of a broader pattern: an empire of ideas with a singular sovereign. Even his aspirational bid for a Nobel Peace Prize—allegedly encouraged by staff at his behest—reveals a man intoxicated not only by influence, but by immortality.

What remains of Klaus Schwab’s WEF is uncertain. Børge Brende and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe may attempt to re-legitimize its mission, to dust off its public trust and reaffirm its relevance. But among the Forum’s financiers and acolytes, there is growing apprehension: does Davos remain magnetic without its high priest? One insider put it plainly: “That is the biggest worry at the moment. Does it die with him or stick to WEF?”

As Klaus Schwab recedes into the footnotes of history, his final chapter remains unwritten—perhaps he will pen memoirs to catalogue his intentions and proclaim his innocence. Yet, even if he evades formal censure, the myth he so carefully constructed is unravelling. He may be remembered less for the ideals he championed than for the grand illusion he perpetuated: that Davos was a fortress of solutions rather than a gilded stage of detached spectacle.

Men like Schwab are often seen as the disease itself, but in truth, they are the symptoms—the parasites—deeply versed in the art of manipulation, thriving within societies long afflicted by such endemic corruption. Like all ideologues who outlive their eras, Schwab is not merely fading; he is being unmasked, his carefully woven illusions stripped away by the very crises he sought to orchestrate. The page turns, the Forum endures, but the man who made it immortal now stands conspicuously mortal, and the mountain echoes differently when its oracle falls silent.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa