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  • CAREER COLUMN

Scientific progress is built on failure

Learning to handle failure is just part of scientific life, writes Eileen Parkes.
  1. Eileen Parkes

    1. Eileen Parkes is an early-career researcher at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, studying the immune response to DNA damage. Outside the lab, she loves spending time with family and talking about all things science on social media. Find her at https://twitter.com/eileen_parkes

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When I moved from medicine into research, the biggest shock to me was failure. I had spent years going home fairly satisfied at the end of the day — a clinic had been completed, treatments prescribed, patients reviewed. Now, I could do weeks of work and yet see no tangible success. I moved into research thinking that this was where the real progress would be made — where I could make a difference. But at times, looking at the most-recent in a long and time-consuming line of failed experiments, I wasn’t so sure.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00107-y

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