In 2020, I drew attention on my first blog to a study in Nature Communications showing that early coauthorship with leading scientists predicts a competitive advantage extending throughout a researcher’s subsequent career, with the uncomfortable implication that the scientific standing of those with whom young researchers work can shape their prospects long after their initial training. In 2024, I returned to this issue, discussing research published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface across 22 scientific disciplines, which identified an increasing association between the scientific impact of mentors and that of their protégés.
My current analysis of several leading universities places ETH Zurich at 99.8 researchers listed in the Elsevier–Stanford scientists ranking per 100 faculty members, a benchmark that confronts universities with a conspicuously low representation of highly cited researchers with a question their promotional rhetoric cannot honestly answer: Should they be required to disclose prospective supervisors’ scientific records and explicitly warn doctoral applicants that a supervisor’s weak scientific standing may seriusly compromise their career prospects, restrict their international visibility and curtail their access to influential scientific networks?
Universities that demand years of intellectual labour while proclaiming their excellence should substantiate those claims through supervisors’ scientific records, allowing applicants to distinguish research achievement from academic titles sheltering scientific mediocrity. Doctoral candidates deserve to know whether they are choosing a mentor whose achievements warrant their trust or a professor whose mediocrity may become their ceiling.
