Misfortune and failure, my old friends

There is an old adage in science: you will fail far more than you will succeed. It’s something I’ve come to accept, although begrudgingly at that, throughout my time as a researcher. I believe most of us who have embarked on a career in science have realised this at least to some extent as well.

To put things into perspective, my first year as a PhD student looked something like below:

1. Cloning woes were a constant companion.
2. Anticipated successful and significant results were few and far between.
3. I received second-degree burns with liquid nitrogen; so I was out of the lab for 1-2 months.
4. About half the lab disappeared on maternity leave at some stage or another.

This was not exactly how I planned the first year of my PhD going, to put it mildly.

Sometimes it’s your own fault that something didn’t work and other times it’s not. Often it is the volunteers, project students and Honours students who make mistakes the most frequently. This isn’t overly surprising as they are often new to the field of hands-on research. But I’m a big believer in learning from your mistakes, and I’ve made a fair few myself. People tend to learn far more from their mistakes than from their successes. For me, the mistakes I have made are often right at the front of my mind, so I rarely make the same mistake twice. However, mistakes don’t tend to get you too far with research.

But what if, theoretically, your experiment is flawless in design and it still doesn’t work? Well, that’s when people start losing their minds.

One of the things that I’ve noticed, at least in Honours and PhD students is their ability to cope in adverse scenarios. Some crack under the pressure and quit, others keep pushing through but question why they are doing all this work in the first place, and others possess a sheer stubbornness with a “failure is not an option” mentality. Everyone is different in how they cope with failure. Some are quiet in their despair, others will rant and rave, and finally some will drown their sorrows in coffee, alcohol or ice-cream. Most will use a combinatorial approach to some extent.

I find that while each coping mechanism has its own merit, it’s also important not to become too bogged down in it. Yes, it’s okay to be upset that something didn’t go the way you wanted it to, but we as scientists are investigators and problem solvers. It might be hard, but we need to take a step back, think about the science rationally, and come up with an explanation as to why the experiment failed and what could be done next time to improve the outcome.

For many of us scientists, we take the failure because we love what we do and we problem-solve around it. It might take a while to fix the problem, but you’ll eventually get the data you need for that next publication or grant.

And through all of this we, as scientists, gain resilience.

There is something that is said fairly common around the lab – at least by one of our lab members – and it’s something that may be an unpopular opinion, but I think could be quite valuable. What is that exactly? Don’t become too personally invested in your science.

I chose to interpret it in a particular way when I was having a rough time with my PhD. For me, it meant stopping lab work for a day or two and evaluating where my project was and where I wanted it to go. It also meant evaluating my personal life a bit too. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, I realised my personal life was non-existent, or rather the lab was my personal life. I ended up doing a lot to try and rectify this and get a better work-life balance. I went on a holiday around Europe for 3 weeks, joined a netball team, picked up French classes, aimed to catch up with friends and family I had been neglecting, and resolved (mostly) ongoing sleeping problems. It was something that I probably should have done some time ago, but it’s done now and I’m happier for it.

Evaluating is something we constantly do in our science, but maybe not something we do too often in our personal lives. I would encourage everyone to take a break, evaluate, and then progress with a clear head – especially if things aren’t going your way.

Nicola Scott (@Nicola_A_Scott) is a PhD candidate studying cholesterol regulation at UNSW. This story was published on November 28, 2018, on Confessions of the Brown Lab Researchers (available here), and has been republished here with permission.