Nepal’s academic research has an ethics problem

A new library of the Tribhuvan University’s Central Department of Anthropology. Photo: Aryan Dhimal Thousands of research papers and theses are written every year across universities in Nepal, but many of these research’s depicts a troubling pattern i.e.

many of these work’s proceeds and gets published without formal ethical review. Ethical approval is not a bureaucratic formality; it exists to protect the research participants’ rights, ensure informed consent, minimise harm and uphold scientific integrity.

When it is skipped, research risks becoming extractive rather than responsible. The most horrifying part of this crisis is the blind spot surrounding its scale: while regulatory records reflect out of how many submitted proposals receive ethical clearance , the country possesses no data or tracking mechanisms to account for countless studies carried out across the nation without any ethical approval whatsoever.