Parasitic and parachute research in global health
Authors: James Smith
Journal: The Lancet Global Health (2018)

Global health advocates often speak the language of eradication. It is reassuring to see the Editors of The Lancet Global Health turn their attention to another eradication effort: that of so-called parachute researchers and parasitic research (June issue).1The Lancet Global HealthClosing the door on parachutes and parasites.Lancet Glob Health. 2018; 6: e593Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (33) Google Scholar The Editors raise the important issue of exploitative research activities, from which individuals from predominantly high-income countries extract data and knowledge from predominantly low-income and middle-income countries without due acknowledgment of local partners and collaborators. However, what is missing from this strongly worded Editorial is due acknowledgement of the true extent to which parachutists and parasites have shaped, and continue to shape, global health discourse. Such exploitative claims have been levelled against The Lancet in the past,2Horton R Offline. Is global health neo-colonialist?.Lancet. 2013; 382: 1690Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (21) Google Scholar and will probably be made again until such a time that the entirety of the system for global health research and reflection, and its presentation in academic journals, is radically reimagined. Many now-influential academics have established their careers on the basis of exploitative research and publishing for global health, and continue to do so, in a way that has not been suppressed in the semantic transition from international to global health. If this debate is limited to the pursuit of appropriate authorship criteria, then an opportunity has been lost to more meaningfully explore the ways in which power continues to manifest unequally in knowledge production for global health. For as long as a positivist epistemology continues to shape global health scholarship, it will be perceived that all that is needed of knowledge production in global health is more inclusive authorship criteria. Such an approach assumes the existence of an objective and apolitical knowledge, and thus sees little need for a diversity of perspectives at all stages in knowledge production for global health—from the prioritisation of research questions, to the financing of particular research initiatives, and the analysis and interpretation of data. The publishing houses that host global health scholarship would do better to interrogate the ways in which truly global perspectives are lost at all stages in this process. I declare no competing interests. Closing the door on parachutes and parasitesNo one likes a parachute researcher: the one who drops into a country, makes use of the local infrastructure, personnel, and patients, and then goes home and writes an academic paper for a prestigious journal. At The Lancet Global Health, we look extremely unfavourably on papers submitted by authors who have done primary research in another country (particularly a low-income or middle-income country) but not included any author from that nation. For research involving patient recruitment, treatment in existing facilities, and follow-up, the notion that no locally based individuals made a "substantial contribution" (per authorship criteria) to the acquisition of data is pure fiction. Full-Text PDF Open Access