Contemporary civilization greatly prizes success. Success determines what and who you are. The single objective of any successful effort is to result in a positive return. It is assumed that the goal of a firm effort should be specifically established.
The value of success is derived from the extent to which you succeed rather than from the degree of failure. A popular assumption is that failure is to be prevented because success is to be accomplished, but the truth is that success cannot come without the onset of failure. This article is all about recognizing failure as an equally significant factor in experience, schooling, and career progression as success. We get familiar with the world of failure at an early age. As adolescents, we soon learn how failure impacts our success in education.
My generation of students had to suffer from fear of failing exams, courses, and promotions, which would result in repeating the academic year. This initial encounter with failure has a huge influence on our prejudicial view of the subject and theme. Failure is said to be the inverse of success, a concept that places a position for failure and its meaning in one’s existence.
Though being real, this is typical of those who are doing science. They try tirelessly to excel in all obstacles. There is hardly anything to sacrifice for the outcome, only perfect it.
The early carrier students and scientists need to be trained and nurture on the saying “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. There is no real secret ingredient necessary for succeeding in any particular venture. And to not forget that, “Failure is the integral stepping stone to success”. Science is something where we push the edge of knowledge and failure is common in science. Science thrives when failures are chronicled as much as they do in publications, patents, grants, prizes, and so on. Remarkably comfy scientific research is an absurd statement and if we’re to create fresh breakthroughs, then we have to accept the chance and believe that we might under-perform or even we may fail. Scientific research is very much at great risk and failure is something we all encounter. For championing scientific research, it is necessary to discuss both positive and negative aspects. Getting failed is always natural but failing to try after getting failure is unnatural. If a plan does not go well, this lesson teaches us to take care of multiple alternatives and above all, we learn to be persistent and to have tolerance for when the situation appears to be hopeless.
Any minor failure in science lets improve the view, create a new experimental configuration or produce new knowledge and observations. We shall be persistent to succeed and keep trying even after failing several times. These are all the crucial qualities necessary for the establishment of an early carrier researcher.
We have to work on the strategy for coping with frequent refusals more explicitly with our mates, instructors, guides or colleagues, rather than renouncing science. And more specifically the setbacks are needed to overcome the frequent failures. Setbacks are an expected part of the science life cycle. To help illustrate the effect, I will quote the recent research carried by the research group of Dashun Wang in 2019 as an example. The group examined the proposals of early carrier scientists submitted for R01 Grants of the National Institute of Health.
While critically analyzing the proposals fell just below and just above the funding threshold, they compared the narrow-miss and narrow-win applications and realized that the early carrier set-back has a powerful, opposing effect. They observed that after an early set-back, early carrier scientists who continued trying systematically over placed those with narrow-wins in the longer run. Have a look at table 1 of this article.
The table contains the data of grants submitted (during 2012-2019) by Bryan W. Jones who is a retinal neuroscientist and director of the Marclab for Connectomics at the University of Utah, United States of America.
The red indicates the grants which are turned down and the green shows the successful ones. A critical analysis shows that Dr Bryan encountered 22 failures in the initial 02 years, during 2012-2014.
I would love to praise his amazing patience, consistency and courage. Yeah, 2014 has been a nice year for Bryan. He succeeded the 23rd attempt this year and he earned his first grant in 2014. 07 years, 63 contestations and just 09 wins, isn’t this a shameful score?No, it’s not; it’s a respectable score and science will take this into account. Science isn’t only about success; it’s more, about happiness, satisfaction and about what’s been accomplished. It’s already more than one win every year on his average.
How did he make such great development in a short amount of time? The query may have many responses but my first impression is that it reflects his dedication along with his never-ending eagerness to explore, develop and master himself.
Failures are vital for introducing changes and developments to modern civilization. Before concluding I would like to mention one more example-we must prepare for season wise flower planting so that we can enjoy beautiful flower plants in spring, summer and autumn.
These flowers bloom early in the spring and are short-lived. But on the other side we plant a banyan tree, it takes years to completely mature, however, once it’s grown, it will continuously yield strong and stable branches providing shade and protection to several generations to come.
Research is a gradual process of development that require a period to develop but once it’s grown-up it can step forward without becoming stationary. Let’s each be a real banyan tree. Let’s extend our core competency. Let’s learn to experience failures and let’s constructively address things.
Failure makes us more driven and unstoppable in pursuing future achievements. Perhaps we should not be fearful of the failures but rather learning from them for the experience to be created. In this sense, let’s continue to think about success. Let’s step on to achieve success.
Acknowledgement: The author is deeply thankful to Dr Bryan W. Jones, University of Utah, the United States of America for providing his data of applications submitted for the external grants.
References: Wang, Y., Jones, B.F., Wang, D. 2019; Early carrier setback and future carrier impact, Nature Communications, 10, 4331.
