Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Scientists at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management have established a causal relationship between failure and future success, proving German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's adage that "what does not kill me makes me stronger."
The researchers utilized advanced analytics to assess the relationship between professional failure and success for young scientists. They found, in contrast to their initial expectations, that failure early in one's career leads to greater success in the long term for those who try again.
"The attrition rate does increase for those who fail early in their careers," lead author Yang Wang said. "But those who stick it out, on average, perform much better in the long term, suggesting that if it doesn't kill you, it really does make you stronger."
The study, "Early-career setback and future career impact," will be published Oct. 1, in Nature Communications[*].
The findings provide a counter-narrative to the Matthew Effect, which posits a "rich get richer" theory that success begets more success.
"It turns out that, historically, while we have been relatively successful in pinpointing the benefits of success, we have failed to understand the impact of failure," said Dashun Wang, corresponding author and associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg.
[...]The research does not contradict the Matthew Effect, but rather suggests a complementary path for those who fail.
"There is value in failure," Dashun Wang said. "We have just begun expanding this research into a broader domain and are seeing promising signals of similar effects in other fields."
[*] Nature Communications Open Access Link: Early-career setback and future career impact.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @03:50PM (4 children)
You learm from your nistakes.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @03:56PM
If at first you don't succeed; paragliding isn't for you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:13PM (2 children)
Or one I heard from a professor:
"If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough."
You'll never discover how far you can really push your limits, except by pushing past them into failure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
He who succeeds the first time has learned nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:50PM
"Do or do not, there is no try"... Yoda was an idiot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday October 02 2019, @04:37PM
Good decisions come from experience. And experience comes from bad decisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @04:49PM
Today I'm President of the United States!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday October 02 2019, @04:51PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha [wikipedia.org]
Enough said.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:40PM
The rest is understood, here is the full ‘lawyer version’
“Whatever doesn’t kill you, cripple, blind, cause severe psychological stress, garnish your wages or otherwise impair your long term ability to function, makes you stronger.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:14PM (3 children)
"Those who try again"
So, they've omitted all the ones that the failure left them unable to continue.
And, they've also preselected for those with strong perseverance. Those same people probably were likely to have succeeded regardless of the initial failure.
This may well be true, but it's certainly not a slam dunk. It may well just be that early failure weeds out those who might not have performed well later. It may also needlessly weed out a bunch who would have done fine but for a catastrophic early failure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Wednesday October 02 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
Another reading is that the analysis ignores what it takes to "try again": Wealth. That is, when a young entrepreneur / scientist takes an early risk and fails, their background enters the equation and determines if they can try again. Someone whose parent happen to be a donor to the university might see another grant despite repeated failures. Or a certain president might get loans after loans despite repeated bankruptcies thanks to multiple generations of financial / industrial ties backing him up.
From there, it's a matter of stats: Repeated attempts will lead to chance success in the grand scheme of things.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 03 2019, @03:41AM (1 child)
Wealth surely is an important factor in entrepreneurship, but not for scientists (at least from my experience in Europe; maybe in America it's different). However having the right connections helps a lot.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:24AM
Wealth isn't just currency. There was a survey discussed in the context of hereditary intelligence a while ago demonstrating those working in Academia are highly likely of having parents similarly working in Academia. These political ties fall under wealth in the same way an entrepreneur benefits from their parent having a friendly banker or two.
Regardless, Academia and industry aren't separate. Look at Sander's wife scandal story from a few years ago went as far as to relate to the Democratic party's position on Cuba... Wealth is a web of interests and connection that exceeds money. A rich man moves his own money. A well connected politicians moves the nations money. They can put their sons in a foreign boardroom. They can run a billion dollar military contract their friend's way. This is no different in Academia. Not hiring the rich kid as a lab assistant could mean not getting a grant for your own research. Not giving the senator's son a pass on every test could mean no more talks of tenure.
Social networks and corruption are just different side of the same coin and they feed back and forth wherever and to everything humans touch.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:43PM
That headline is total garbage. That are painful experiences that make you stronger, but more often painful experiences make you weaker. And sometimes they do both at the same time in different ways.
Just because something is a pithy saying doesn't make is useful, except as a piece of propaganda.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:00PM
Scientists. For young scientists who fail and try again, the long term prospects are greater than young scientists who don't fail. Got it.
How that applies to other professions and demographic groups is entirely unclear. For instance, there are studies that show college graduates that graduate when the economy is bad (hard to find jobs), do worse in the long run than graduates who graduate when the economy is strong.