Last week, I saw it twice in a single day—once on Facebook and once on LinkedIn: “World’s Top Scientist.” The citation numbers were framed just right. Then came the usual replies: “Proud moment,” “Congratulations,” and clapping emojis all the way down.
Local news soon picked it up and ran with it. A digital certificate looks official, so the headline becomes “renowned global expert,” with little effort to explain what the badge actually means or how the ranking was calculated. I understand why people like it. It feels like a quick win and fits neatly on a phone screen. But the noise is drowning out a more complicated truth: Nepal’s research culture is under strain. We celebrate the scoreboard while ignoring the conditions that make good work possible in the first place.
I understand the reasons behind this. Let’s be realistic about being a researcher in Nepal. It is a lonely, exhausting, and often thankless struggle. Most academics are, first and foremost, full-time teachers. They are buried under heavy course loads and the daily frustrations of campus politics. They don’t have “research time.” They have tired evenings and Saturdays. Funding is virtually non-existent. Even when someone secures a grant, the money barely covers stationery, let alone equipment or the protected time needed for serious research.
In a system that offers almost no support, a digital badge can feel like a life raft. It is a way to say, “I’m here,” even when no one seems to care. The danger is that we have started using these badges as shortcuts. We no longer ask the questions that define science: Is the work reliable? Did this person actually discover something new? Can others test the findings? Instead of quality, we have become obsessed with quantity. We have stopped thinking critically.
This is a crisis. As Nepal tries to build an authentic research culture, standards are slipping. Hiring committees increasingly find counting easier than reading. They want volume, speed, and a single number that fits neatly into a spreadsheet. This “management by numbers” approach is a disaster for intellectual honesty.
Once these shortcuts become normal, everyone adapts to the game. Researchers learn that a flashy claim brings promotions or TV interviews, while the quiet scientist doing careful work in a lab gets overlooked. This erodes trust. When the system is easy to manipulate, people begin to doubt every scientist—even those doing the hardest, most honest work. When fake and real research look identical on paper, real science begins to look pointless to younger generations. They see a “Top Scientist” badge and assume that is the goal, not discovery.
NAST at work to publish directory of Nepali scientists and tech...
Consider citations. They show that someone noticed a paper, but they do not measure truth. They measure attention—nothing more. Attention is shaped by trends, networks, and disciplines that publish at high speed. A study that solves a local health crisis in a remote village may be crucial for Nepal, yet attract few international citations. Does that make it less scientific than a theoretical paper heavily cited in Europe? Of course not. Yet our current system treats it that way. We are effectively outsourcing judgment to algorithms designed by companies in the West.
Rankings suffer from the same flaw. They compress a thirty-year career into a single decimal point. These databases favor certain formats and English-language journals, causing locally impactful work to vanish from view. Numbers cannot tell us who is a good mentor, who handles data with integrity, or who does the exhausting, ethical fieldwork in the mountains.
We need to stop obsessing over global lists and start valuing research that genuinely helps people in Nepal. A person can look impressive on a ranking and still produce shallow, useless work. Conversely, someone barely visible in rankings may be doing work that truly matters. We reward what is easy to count because reading a paper takes time and expertise that many committees are unwilling to invest. They want shortcuts. They want decimals.
This obsession with quantity over quality has turned publishing into a frantic race. It encourages “salami slicing”—splitting one solid study into several weak papers to inflate publication counts. It pushes researchers toward predatory journals that publish anything for a fee. Most damaging of all, authorship has become a currency. Names are added to papers as favors or to appease supervisors. Authorship becomes a transaction, not a contribution.
Students are watching. They are not listening to speeches about “excellence”; they are watching who gets hired and promoted. If shortcuts lead to success, they will learn to take them. We are training marketers instead of scientists. We are teaching them that the badge matters more than the lab report.
In much of Nepal, a functioning laboratory is a luxury. Equipment is broken or uncalibrated. Access to journals is a constant struggle. In this environment, quick signals of success are tempting. A “top scientist” post is free publicity. But building a real lab or training a student takes years of quiet, expensive effort. The gap between quick wins and long-term investment is where credibility is being lost.
We have all seen cases that raise questions: people with hundreds of publications who have never run a lab; individuals claiming PhDs while being vague about the institution or thesis; honorary titles presented as earned degrees. When the media repeats these claims without verification, it fails the public. Most people cannot distinguish between an honorary degree and an academic one, and it is our responsibility to explain the difference.
This does not mean every unusual case is a lie. It means the system does not check. We avoid asking for proof because we fear appearing disrespectful. Yet in science, skepticism is a form of respect. The absence of verification allows a few individuals to game the system, making honest researchers appear slow or unproductive. The public relies on universities and the media to act as filters. When those filters fail, the loudest voice dominates.
The consequences extend far beyond universities. They affect how society views medicine, disaster preparedness, and education. When science resembles marketing, trust in expertise erodes. People begin doubting real doctors, engineers, and scientists—along with those chasing fame. In a country vulnerable to earthquakes and floods, we cannot afford confusion over whom to trust. We need experts grounded in reality, not just impressive on paper.
Real research is not a badge. It leaves a trail. You can trace the question, examine the method, and evaluate the conclusion. It acknowledges its limits rather than hiding them. Real work withstands tough questions because it was designed to be tested.
We need transparency in credentials. A PhD represents years of rigorous training and should be easy to verify. The university, department, and dissertation should be publicly accessible. If that trail is missing, it is reasonable to ask whether the training occurred. We should not be embarrassed to ask for evidence.
Reform is possible without shaming anyone. We need clear standards and better evaluation methods. Instead of asking for fifty papers, ask for the three strongest. Ask researchers to explain, in plain language, exactly what they did. And then—hard as it may be—require committees to read the work before making decisions. No more spreadsheets. Just reading.
Finally, researchers must stop pretending they can speak authoritatively on everything. No one is an expert in all fields, yet the same voices appear everywhere with confident opinions. Interdisciplinary work matters, but it does not erase boundaries; it makes honesty about limits even more important. If you share a ranking, explain its context. If you hold a degree, be clear about your field. Honesty builds more credibility than any “top scientist” badge ever could.
Respect in science is earned slowly. It comes from work that survives scrutiny. Nepal’s scientific credibility will not be built on hype. It will be built on research that holds up under examination. That is what we should be rewarding.
