Dear Editor, we read with enthusiasm the correspondence by Mungmunpuntipantip and Wiwanitkit,1 in which the authors added a valuable discussion to our published paper.2

Apart from the public health policies we discussed in our paper, our colleagues also highlighted the importance of normal public health measures (e.g., airport screening) and, especially, the lack of expertise and clinical management of such a new viral disease. They also pointed out that scientists might have overconfidence in their abilities to treat/control new diseases such as Monkeypox,3 mainly in developing countries, such as Thailand, India, and Brazil which can compromise the disease dispersion causing a possible new pandemic.

On top of proper public health policies, scientists and health professionals should not repeat the same mistakes made during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID)-19 pandemic. Also, it is important to optimize scientific knowledge with caution, enabling the emergence of high-quality science. The first step to do that is to improve the inclusion of science in professional qualifications and to publish high-quality studies rather than just achieving a higher F-impact or improving our own H-index.4 It was noteworthy how COVID-19 papers were reviewed faster and how pre-print repositories have grown during the COVID-19 pandemic,5 which may even characterize a “paperdemic”.6,7 Unfortunately, the higher number of published papers was not followed by adequate scientific scrutiny, which translated into a higher retraction rate from COVID-19 papers.7 Although we do need scientific research regarding Monkeypox, it is our duty, as scientists, not to sacrifice scientific method and quality to the anxiety for publication. As one might say “we need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”.8