Mount Everest syndrome

A form of Everest syndrome — The tendency of academic researchers to study things merely because they exist to be studied, regardless of the usefulness of the research.

Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

noun
  1. alternativeAlternative form of Everest syndrome.

    Resist falling prey to the “Mount Everest syndrome” of inserting images simply because you can.

    1996, Chuck Musciano, Bill Kennedy, HTML: The Definitive Guide, O’Reilly & Associates, →ISBN, page 189
    2 more examples

    “People have been interested in Indian land ever since they knew it was there. Sort of like the Mount Everest syndrome, I guess.”

    2014, Nancy Morse, chapter 8, in Sacred Places, →ISBN, page 97

    The regime turn in IR started with Robert Keohane (1969) accusing UN studies of suffering from a ‘Mount Everest syndrome’. It is not sufficient, he argued, to study the UN because it is there.

    2017, Rafael Biermann, “The Role of International Bureaucracies”, in Rafael Biermann, Joachim A. Koops, editors, The Palgrave Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations in World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, section 3 (Theories and Approaches), page 250
Cite this entry
APA

Mount Everest syndrome. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Mount%20Everest%20syndrome

MLA

“Mount Everest syndrome.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Mount%20Everest%20syndrome. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Mount Everest syndrome,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Mount%20Everest%20syndrome.

Source: Mount Everest syndrome on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.