The annual Indian Science Congress, an event attended by thousands of scientists and teachers, is usually a dull affair. Attendees enjoy the government-funded junket, listen to talks on the achievements of state-administered laboratories, and duck out whenever possible to socialize.

In the last few years, however, things have gotten interesting. At a recent congress, a retired aviation expert named Captain Anand J. Bodas claimed that an ancient Indian sage called Bharadwaj had written a treatise on aeronautics, and that this lost document proved hypersonic transport had been a reality in ancient India. According to Bodas, this treatise had been downloaded through “psychic channeling” by a scholar in the 1920s.

Other statements made directly by members of the government over the last few years were no less bizarre. Rekha Arya, then livestock minister of Uttarakhand state, claimed in 2018 that cows — which are known to be a leading source of the greenhouse gas methane — are in fact the only species that actually exhales oxygen. Then there was Dr Harsh Vardhan, minister of science and technology, who emphatically stated that the legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking had endorsed the Vedas, the ancient Indian religious texts, for their scientific knowledge. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reported to have said that genetic research, stem cell therapy, and even plastic surgery were prevalent in the times of the Mahabharata.