Success and failure in science

Science is a very competitive field and demands a high level of success. Not only do you need to make an advance, but you need to make a major advance, get it published in a top-tier journal and repeat over and over again to have a career in the field.

But perhaps how science treats failure is the really remarkable part. Science is remarkably tolerant of failure, even repeated failure. I've probably had 500 rejections from scientific journals - I don't even bother counting. My grant rejection rate is over 50%. I've had projects that have been cut after years of investment, with no return. It happens, and you get used to it.

As scientists we are always inching our way forward into the unknown, making wrong turn after wrong turn until we finally stumble onto a new truth. Constant, gruelling failure is just built into the system. This is one of the toughest lessons for new PhD students to learn - yes, nothing is working, but that is normal! My first paper was one of the most important of my career, earning me my post-doc position and being critical for my faculty position. Yet if you were to look at all the experiments that are included in the paper, they probably only took an accumulated 10 days. The actual project took two years, but most of that time was design, breeding and genotyping, experimental troubleshooting, and generally being busy without producing results.

It is a funny thing to consider, but science completely ignores all of your failures and judges you on your absolutely best days. Those few days that get results are the ones that make your paper. Even if you have published a hundred papers, you are only judged on the best five. So to students that are stressed out about failure - don't worry, failure is normal and healthy in science, and will never be held against you. If you can follow up four years of failure with one good breakthrough, you will be widely congratulated and rewarded.