In a recent survey, public trust in scientists was relatively high in India, which ranked second among 68 countries. However, the proportion of people who think that science is interesting is still thought to be a ​“minority”. It is widely accepted that communities that do not uphold value-based science risk losing the foundation for long-term progress. Trust without interest suggests two things: first, that science is viewed as important work done by scientists, but is not perceived as relevant or useful to common people. Second, that scientists do not speak the language of the public who pay the tax that most commonly funds their work. 

The general lack of interest in science, compounded by anecdotes of early-career researchers reporting delayed or unpaid salaries, toxic lab environments, and poor mentorship, may contribute to research not being among the top career choices in India. Apart from lower investment in research, brain drain and the lack of preference for a career in research may also contribute to India’s lower research density. India is reported to have only about 255 full-time equivalent researchers per million people, which is way below the figure for developed economies such as the US (over 4,800) and Germany (5,400), or other Asian countries, such as Pakistan (474), China (1,849) and Singapore (7,920).

Additionally, while scientific outreach efforts to ignite interest in the community are making slow but steady progress, there has been a rapid increase in publication retractions from India (1, 2), driven by errors, plagiarism, and ethical concerns. For example, the proportion of randomised controlled trials published in Anaesthesia between 2017 and 2021 found that 62% of Indian trials contained falsified data, while 46% were fatally flawed. Partly driven by the ​“publish or perish” pressures in Indian academia, such practices lead to research and resource waste in an already limited resource environment. More importantly, over time, research or publication errors and fraud can chip away at scientific credibility and compromise public trust. 

This misalignment between trust and interest in science in citizens, coupled with the preoccupation with publication metrics, presents a reality that requires us to introspect and assess ​“what ails science in India?” This introspection is a necessary step for the scientific community because issues can be appropriately addressed once they are recognised and then faced head-on. The urgency is greater now than ever because new technologies amplify both facts and falsehoods. Artificial intelligence (AI) can scale errors and distortions rapidly, and celebrity influencers can package persuasive narratives that cast science and researchers as snake-oil merchants rather than as servants of society. Thus, restoring integrity, transparency, and accountability in scientific research is critical to maintaining public trust. In life science research, the misalignment is prominent due to the high stakes associated with life-saving research and its outcomes.

With shared experience of over two decades spread over Asia, Europe, and America, we identify the following as important drivers of the current state of life science research in India and its social relevance.

1. Rewarding individualism versus collectivism: Institutions routinely single out and reward individuals and concentrate authority, despite the norm of science being largely interdisciplinary and collaborative. This focused recognition reinforces power hierarchies in academia. The need is to recognise the collective contribution of each researcher to institution-building. Like the adage, it takes a village to build an institution! The centralised power structure fosters ​“mafia-like behaviour” of research groups where younger researchers or new faculty in a university ​“toe the line” of senior researchers to survive or advance in academia. Reinforcement of existing poor practices and behaviours through role-modelling and recognition is among the dangers for science at institutional, national, and global levels. The younger generation is more likely to choose science if it looks less hierarchical. 

2. Obsession with metrics: Currently, institutional ranking and career promotion metrics are a proxy for excellence and high quality. While such metrics have merits for assessment agencies and scientometric evaluations, in the recent past, they have led to an obsession and a certain fixation with such numerical indices. Most ignore the biases in these indices and, by citing a lack of alternatives, indirectly encourage others to use these metrics. There will be new metrics that invariably would be implicitly reductive and ignore the nuances of how science works. Nevertheless, the presence of a flawed framework risks amplifying the same problem. There are numerous instances where authorships are frequently negotiated or imposed through power dynamics. Such practices have been demonstrated repeatedly to be disadvantageous for women and underrepresented researchers because the system was built in the global north, which is relatively safeguarded from some of these biases. Ghost and gift authorships, and, more recently, fake authorships generated by paper mills, inflate existing metrics utilising their underlying weaknesses. Funders that prioritise apparent ​“return on investment” often channel resources toward already highly-ranked individuals and institutions, reinforcing conventional thinking, entrenching investigator biases, and sidelining alternative perspectives that might be scientifically valuable. This particularly affects early and middle-career researchers, making research a less optimal career choice with lower probabilities of success, making attracting and retaining talent difficult. 

3. Undervaluing mentorship and collegial service: Institutions celebrate huge grant wins, publications in prestigious life science journals, and awards. However, the support for a healthier research culture that sustains and provides for such achievements is overlooked and not given enough credit. In short, we fail to recognise ​“goodness” in scientists. Improving methods, mentoring trainees thoughtfully, running professional societies and focused groups, serving as editors and performing peer review are less factored. In other words, a framework akin to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for life science research may be needed to foster a healthier research culture. 

4. Social media influencing: Currently, social media amplifies both the good and not-so-good parts of academia. High-profile cases where former mentees publicly shared unpleasant or negative experiences show that professional success does not guarantee good leadership. Also, social media tends to project survivorship bias. On the contrary, when researchers share their work on social media, they democratise knowledge and build public trust. But they must do so responsibly: explain findings in plain language, state limitations and uncertainty, avoid hype or definitive claims beyond the data, and link to primary sources where possible. Good science communication invites questions, corrects errors visibly, and treats audiences with respect. This helps people make informed decisions rather than just chasing attention. For example, a tweetorial or thread explaining recent publication in lay terms is one approach. Institutional science communication channels also serve as valuable resources. It is important to recognise that publications are not the end, but the beginning of dissemination.. This is one way to increase social engagement and increase public interest in science. 

5. Inadequate emphasis on standards of research integrity & reproducibility: Thanks to social media and other outlets, the frequency of news reporting scientific misconduct and other practices is higher than earlier. While this exposure is welcome, it indicates the need for emphasis on research integrity and reproducibility in the institutional setting, in researcher training. There should be funds and time allocated for reproducibility audits and independent replication studies as a normal part of research cycles, and not as a corrective action. Indian scientists enjoy a high level of trust and should persevere to keep it.

6. Biased perceptions: There exists an implicit bias that high-quality science happens only in well-established and elite institutions, while other institutions are engaged primarily in teaching. However, the ground reality is that there is good science happening in many institutions, and there are retractions of published work from elite institutions, both within India and abroad. An understanding that such bias exists and learning to ignore the pincode/zipcode-based evaluations would benefit all stakeholders. This would also reduce the brain drain and migration towards elite institutions within and outside the country.

What’s the way forward?

Some practical steps to consider are given below to make science interesting to society:

To make science socially relevant

• Encourage scientific communication as part of a research career and foster healthy discussions about ongoing research with local communities.

• Train grant reviewers, institutional evaluators, and researchers on qualitative research impact assessment, such as DORA and CORRA, which are still unfamiliar to many.

• Make scientific dissemination plan an essential criterion in research grants.

• Reduce emphasis on individual visibility and publication metrics, and adopt a multi-pronged assessment framework in hiring and promotion decisions

To make scientific careers attractive and retain talent

• Create and strengthen existing fellowship schemes that encourage students to pursue research at postdoctoral levels, with scope for stable positions

• Co-develop research programs with the industry/​research institutions to establish research positions also outside of academia 

• Create alternative funding schemes that incentivise inter-institutional or industry-academia collaborations to build capacity, and explicitly prioritise early- and middle-career investigators and collaborations between investigators with varying levels of experience. 

• Develop structured mentorship schemes, where senior researchers mentor junior investigators beyond their immediate networks, creating broader opportunities for growth.

• Recognise and reward effective mentorship through institutional and professional society-level awards, and actively amplify these values. 

• Normalise routine, constructive feedback from mentees as part of faculty review and professional development.

To improve research integrity to reinforce trust in science

• Conduct workshops for researchers on the risks of hyper-productivity and the ethical and practical problems of being a hyper-prolific author

• Guide researchers away from idolising institutions or individuals (within and outside India). Instead, emphasise evaluating contributions based on their societal impact, including knowledge generation, process improvement, and innovation.