Nepal, July 26 -- This methodological weakness of Nepal's development research has been documented for decades. In the 1980s, researchers found that estimates of Nepali firewood use varied so wildly between studies that the numbers were simply too unreliable to say whether Himalayan forests were disappearing at all. Yet, these same numbers were treated as facts, informing a World Bank prediction that no accessible forest would remain in Nepal by 2000.

Likewise, anthropologist Judith Justice found that Nepal's health data was produced to satisfy bureaucratic reporting requirements rather than to understand conditions on the ground. Planning documents described a Nepal that existed only on paper. Even forty years ago, research was being pr...