Photo credit: Sarah Kilian
I tried to hide my embarrassment and frustration, but I’m sure my averted gaze and nervous fidgeting made it obvious that I had bad news to share.
I’d been a member of the lab for a few months but, looking at the state of the project, you might not have guessed that. Progress had been slow, and I now had to report to my mentor not only that I’d failed again to get our experiment working, but also that I’d broken over a thousand dollars-worth of equipment with one clumsy mistake. I managed to get the words out with a flimsy stoicism and prepared myself for reprimand.
He gave me a look that was somewhere between understanding and amused and said “Happens to everyone! You did good. Just fail better next time.”
I was struck by this interaction. Not just because he responded to ‘I broke many valuable things’ with ‘good job’, but because in four words he delivered one of the most profoundly important lessons a scientist (or anybody) could ever learn: fail better next time. With this simple directive, he was encouraging me to learn from my mistakes and try again, while also acknowledging that error is unavoidable, so I should expect more of it.
Photo credits: Esteé Janssens
Failed experiments, inaccurate conclusions, and, apparently, fledgling scientists breaking your fancy equipment, are the norm in science. Though pervasive failure sounds like a bad thing, it becomes a driving force for progress when met with revision. Every time a well-constructed model fails to make reliable predictions, or we get new data that are incompatible with our expectations, we’re forced to re-evaluate our understanding, reconsider our previously held beliefs, and update our perspectives accordingly. With every unsupported hypothesis we learn a little more about what doesn’t work, we discover a new way that we’re wrong, and we’re given the opportunity to do better.
If we imagine a world where scientists cling stubbornly to their favorite belief, discard or ignore contradictory evidence, and make no revisions, it’s easy to see how little progress we would have made. Doctors might still be neglecting to wash their hands and Elon Musk certainly wouldn’t have launched his car into space. In order to move forward from a geocentric world where “bad air” is the source of all maladies and into a world of soap and space exploration, we had to admit error and incorporate new information. Importantly, our understanding of microbiology and astrophysics didn’t need to be perfect to bring us antiseptics and orbiting automobiles. There is much to be learned in both fields, but we still made important progress by consistently failing a little better every time.
This lesson extends far beyond the lab. The need to learn from our mistakes - to fail better next time - applies to all of us, as individuals and as a society. As our species faces new challenges, as we learn more about our effect on our planet, as we struggle to understand one another better, we have to be ready to admit when we’re wrong. We must acknowledge our fallibility, unlearn our misconceptions, and revise our perspectives in accordance with the data. If we cling stubbornly to our personal worldviews in the face of conflicting information, if we’re too afraid of failure to try again, we can’t learn anything new; we can’t do better.
Photo credits: Kyle Johnson
The scientific response to failure is not necessarily natural or easy. Scientists have to be trained to meet failure with revision, to unlearn and relearn and try again (and we still often find it challenging and unpleasant). It takes courage and humility to admit to error, and profound respect for ourselves and for humankind to respond with revision. However difficult, the immense value of this process is written in bold across the history of science.
Science is arguably the most successful and enduring enterprise our species has ever undertaken. Its practice and the body of knowledge it produces has withstood millennia of war and catastrophe, the rise and fall of nations, persecution of dissenting scientists, and alt-facts. And through its stalwart persistence, we’ve been granted the capability to eradicate disease, predict natural disasters, and instantly communicate with people across the globe. We can both seek answers to deeply human questions about the origin of the universe or the seat of consciousness, and entertain ourselves with cat videos. All of these wonders have been built by millennia of better failures and successive approximations of reality. Through a continual process of error and revision, science has become the backbone of life as we know it. We, too, as individuals and as a society, can be self-correcting processes and eternal evolutions fueled by the recognition of our fallibility and the constant willingness to revise.
Science isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. Even with all its flaws, the gaps in understanding, the questions we’ve yet to think of, it is still the most powerful tool for improving human life we’ve ever had. The same is true for us: we all have our flaws, our blind spots and gaps in understanding, but we can look to science as a model for how to improve. We can all be powerful forces for good. We can enrich our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, enhance the quality of our daily lives, and move our society forward. All we have to do is just fail better next time.
-Kelsey
To see more of Kelsey’s work, visit her SciComm website, Good Science Alliance.
Photo credits: Nadya Ploschenko