Failures and mistakes are realities of life, and it actually helps us grow. Intellectually. we know that the greatest achievers routinely experienced colossal failures.

Thomas Edison reportedly failed 10,000 times while he was inventing the light bulb. His famous quoted is:

“I have found 10,000 ways something won’t work. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

The Wright brothers spent years working on failed aircraft prototypes and with their persistence, they finally got it right.

Dear Sundarapandian,

I have experienced that pain already. I was trying to prove that high levels of LDL would not be a threat to one's health and saturated fat could not clog anyone's arteries when I found the Diet of Okinawa. I was very said for weeks. Fortunately, I proved that Okinawa's diet was not what they were advertising and went back to my theories. It is not easy for sure to live with that feeling. From time to time I have little deceptions again. Then, I have to re-evaluate my discourse and be on track again. I would not worry about learning how to live with that feeling, but finding ways to avoid to get to that point.

1st - we have to write a project.

2nd - set aside reliable bibliography.

3rd - write our impressions about the topic

That is, if we stick to the basics we will seldom get to big deceptions. And what if we go blind in the early stages of a research? We have to be satisfied with other concepts we come across during that work. We learn so many things besides our main objectives in any research, that a good research is always worth staring it. So, stick to the new knowledge you acquired and review what went wrong in your project so that you will not be in that situation in the future again.

I always say that worse than finding out we are wrong about something is to continue being wrong without being aware of it. So we have to be happy knowing that we have no longer a wrong thesis.

Another thing that I do not stop saying is that if our problem is to discover we were wrong we should be very happy because some people are starting to think of their pijamas, retirement, tv series, family gossing, etc. If we learn are wrong, it means that we are trying to change the world around us and prove our ideas. We still can be good for something. We were not taking life for granted, we were uneasy with the concepts estabished in our society. Therefore, being wrong also is also to be alive.

Failures and mistakes are realities of life, and it actually helps us grow. Intellectually. we know that the greatest achievers routinely experienced colossal failures.

Thomas Edison reportedly failed 10,000 times while he was inventing the light bulb. His famous quoted is:

“I have found 10,000 ways something won’t work. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

The Wright brothers spent years working on failed aircraft prototypes and with their persistence, they finally got it right.

Various factors contribute to the problem. Statistical mistakes are widespread. The peer reviewers who evaluate papers before journals commit to publishing them are much worse at spotting mistakes than they or others appreciate. Professional pressure, competition and ambition push scientists to publish more quickly than would be wise. A career structure which lays great stress on publishing copious papers exacerbates all these problems. “There is no cost to getting things wrong,” says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who has taken an interest in his discipline’s persistent errors. “The cost is not getting them published.”

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

I think failure is not a failure until you admit it. As long as you are trying to succeed, that means there is no failure.

There is nothing called failure. You may handle failure in research by experimenting and experimenting, by testing and retesting. You may fail, one or twice, or even thrice, but as long as you are trying and attempting to succeed, this is the way how you handle with failure.

Dear Sundarapandian,

I think that the academic body should be capable of correcting any research failures in kind of research corrections.

Dear Mahfuz: For students, who study abroad under a research stipend, there is a time constraint (financial and education visa) to complete the program on time. There are provisions in extending the education visa, but getting financial aid extended solely depends on the support of the doctoral guide. There is pressure on the guide also as it is a funded research and granting agencies may expect some results and journal papers. The open-access journals are also handy for such guides to show proof of publication and also getting good citation (as all can download papers). Under these constraints, if no results are got in the first few years of research, there is a lot of pressure on the student to keep on trying different approaches or start a new problem altogether. This is one of the instances where our advice may help people.

Hi,

According to me "failure" is a very important part in research work. Now failure here may have a meaning like getting a negative results This part is very important because unless we get negative results we wont be able to find the positive way to do it, also the ways via which we got negative results are helpful for others that tells them that these all methods are not appropriate so in itself a negative result is some thing called invention, you actually invented or found news ways to get wrong results, so by any means u don't fail even if you get "negative" results. Failure in research is synonym for next try. This is what i think. 

I always believe that in every experiment, there is something to present as a result of the experiment. It could be a bad result, or even if nothing came out or detected, I can always tell myself that a negative result is still a result. 

If you failed because of lack of scientific method, it´s bad , compromising and makes depressive.

If you have failed because the expected result is missing, this missing can be a scientific success. So don´t worry and try to make the best gain from your work.

Dear  Hanno Krieger, Abedellah & Mahfuz:

In my personal experience, after a few months of post-doctoral research, when I met my research guide, Dr. Byrnes, I was feeling very down. He gave me a task to build an exponential observer for a certain nonlinear control system, and I told him that I am not getting it for the system he gave, and I succeeded in a relevant system only. He frowned deeply for a few seconds only, and told me that non-existence of exponential observer can be published also, and explained to me the physical meaning of the second system I presented. This led to some further work, and I published this in an Elsevier journal. Some exceptional people can turn around "failures" too - how we interpret the results is the key.. Muchas Gracias !

Dear Sundarapandian,

thats a wonderful example for my proposal.

Hello! This is an interesting issue on debate.

Yes, I fully agree with Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan's quoting of Edison. Failure is integrating part of success, especially in terms of honest scientific research. 

The difficulties in coping with failure is a part of maturing, and of course, of the road to certainties.

(I was often taught that to become a good horse rider, you have to fall at least 100 times off the horse)

Experimental failure leads to analysis, and anaslysis is an integrating part of conclusions.

I like to notice when I fail, because it leads me further up the mountain.  (the only problem would be lack of attention, lack of sensitivity, and lack of consciousness and the inteligence to move forward...)

Thank you! 

Kind regards, from someone who fails a lot!

Maria

It is important for research students to choose a good research supervisor, who can give them proper directions in research and give moral support when all is not well, and failures follow one by one in student's research. I have given a query "What are the ideal qualities of a research supervisor" and many excellent replies were given by RG friends. Failures are stepping stones for success.  

Small failures should be tolerated and valuable lessons can be learnt for benefit.

However, I think 3 scenarios of failures can be real failures of no or little benefit:

(1) due to poor planning

(2) it is a large expensive project

(3) it is a project with fixed and tight time frame, for example, a PhD project.

I know the above view may be controversial but they should be avoided.

Dear @Sundar, there is a topic Negative results at Research Gate under which there are some good threads about the issue You have raised. There is a Journal which publishes negative research results. Of course, we do speak about results! Negative results may bring new ideas for future research! Here we go!

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Suggest_any_journals_that_publish_negative_results_and_its_impact

https://www.researchgate.net/post/The_advantage_of_sharing_your_negative_results

Of course, it would be too much to put 5 attachments in one response, so I do continue to bring those threads with relevant answers!

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_a_PhD_thesis_with_negative_results_acceptable_for_the_award_of_the_degree

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_level_of_acceptability_of_negative_results_in_research

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_negative_results_still_results

Honest research practice never fails, whatever the outcome! 

Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts  - True - honest research practice never fails.. but some PhD scholars and scientists are worried about Murphy's law also...

Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.. May be, it already has!"

Murphy's Law #4: "Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view."

In Engineering, Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) is often used to analyze failures and prevent them occurring in future.

FMEA is a bottom up, collective approach to examining a process (see link). It provides a detailed analysis of all possible failures and results in actions to minimize risks that are unacceptable. Steps involved in performing an FMEA are given in the link.

http://www.leadingedgegroup.com/canada/failure-mode-effects-analysis-fmea/

http://www.reseng.com/overviews/fmea_overview.htm

Hi Sundarapandian,

I think failure in research can be handled in the following 3 steps:

1) Continue to equip with Passion & Perseverance if the research is worth undertaking - I think fueling the continuous trying despite the failures are passion and perseverance.  Without these 2 we will give up easily without further trying. 

2) Take failure positively - there is a saying "failure is the mother of success" i.e. failure gives birth to success. Hence, failure is important in our lives in order to achieve success. Some people take failure negatively as final outcome that we should stop trying. However, to some people failure is just providing a cue for learning & telling us to try differently / improve.

3) Learn from the failure - I think repeated failures are worth trying provided we try differently every time because we can't expect different results with the same approach. Every failure has its value to serve as learning / guidance so that we can change our approach differently.

Regards,

Fung

My Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts; Of course it is an important query. For me as an agricultural scientist most of the research based on field experimentation. But I feel only in rarest of rare case may be of failure. Otherwise whatever results are their they should be interpreted and results may be positive or negative both way produce information for fellow scientist. It should be taken supportively. Thanks

Dear Mr. Sundarapandian Vaidyanathan....

In my opinion also it is quite possible that one may not get the desired results in the time given for completing a PhD.....there may be n number of reasons for it.....but if one has given a true effort...there will be some good results in hand and work can be concluded with those results....and the guide can continue the same problem with the next students.....

Now how to handle it....actually it is a failure for guide and student both....But especially for the student.....I feel there must be an awareness in scientific community that such type of research thesis are also possible and must not be taken in a negative way....rather it must be taken as a source of those fields/problems which are still unsolved, where further work is possible and as the person holding this thesis is having good experience about respective area....he/she must be given advantage during post doc/job.....

Regards

Failure is the fact of life and it is one of the reasons for better performance. A person who does not fail probably does not try any thing new or any thing at all. Having said that advising a PhD student and doing an unbounded research should be put in different perspectives.  

A doctoral thesis adviser should assign to a student, a well thought problem where solutions are in sight, not any problem that comes in mind, because failure here has a consequence for the student, the years spent and the courses he/she has taken over the years to built an academic future.

But any researcher can take any problem and challenge his/her intellect, challenge the scope of the field he/she is studying with a cost of only failure but for a better reformulation and restructuring of the problem, which by it self is an indirect discovery of an impossibility - unrecognized success as well. 

We must be patient, if we did not find at least something, we found ways how to think and to search.

However, for the supervisor, he must know choose well the subject for his student.

I think that there is no failure in research; showing that some method does not work is a successful research and the next step in the research will for sure work and lead to good results.

Dear Abedallah,

it´s a little bit too simplified. Of course you can do failures in research. Using the wrong methods, having forgotten mathematical or physical, medical or biological rules, beeing reckles when collecting samples.

How if research with your own funding?i think it will be more stressfull in developing country like south east asia or africa, for people who want to PhD, they don't get funding after the result no lucky with no results, but the funding stop? it will be stressful, coz they have to work for live family, but school PhD with experimental will cost much

Dear Ricky - For any PhD student or for a Professor, the research problem that we choose is very important. If we take a realistic problem, then we may be hopeful of getting some result that may hold merit of getting published in a good journal. Murphy's law may come into play if we take a wild expedition on tackling a serious problem in an unfamiliar territory or if we take an open research problem using the same methodology tried by others without any luck. A good Professor, after several years of experience, knows what is a suitable research problem to assign for a PhD student. In many situations, it will be a part of the research project work the Professor is undertaking. In my own case, I got a very tough research problem, but the auxiliary results that I got while approaching the assigned problem turned out to be good enough. Conferences really help as we may discuss our research problems with good friends and get feedback on taking on new areas / new methods. 

Dear Roland - well said. Also I hope all understand that success & failure are a part of every researcher's life. Even my guide, a famous Professor, could not solve some problems that he wished to solve himself. (That he assigned one such problem to me as a research problem is another story that I may share at a later time). This journey often takes us into exploring some new methodology that may be useful for tackling some other problems. I got inspired by reading a book "From Poverty to Power" by James Allen. I recommend it to those who feel very down.

Muchas Gracias !!

Dear Professor @Hanno, I do agree with you. You remind me with a conversation with my supervisor Professor Klaus Hoellig more than 10 years after doing my Ph.D thesis. He told me that he should seek forgiveness from me because he gave me a topic that would lead to solving the problem or can not do any related research because of the nature of the topic; so, if I fail to solve the problem then I should begin from the beginning with another topic. I did succeed and I do appreciate this great Mathematician from whom I did learn a lot.

Dear Abedallah: You remind me of a conversation I had with my supervisor before completing my thesis. My research was not getting along well, and he was not too happy with my slow progress. Then I asked him directly - "Can you solve this problem?" and he gave me a direct reply "If I thought I could solve it, I wouldn't have given it to you!" How true it  was!! After a while, he gave me some other - related problem - that I solved very quickly and completed my doctoral work.

Still I remember this conversation!

Dear @Sundar, this is research; nothing is sure, no guarantee to get results, but we investigate to know more details about the problem and write our results in a research article or report.

Building resilience isn't about blind optimism. Rather than looking only on the bright side and pushing away negative emotions, resilient people let themselves experience what they're feeling in any given situation, whether it's good or bad

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/02/habits-of-resilient-people_n_3818652.html

Public dissemination of research results: "Both authors and publishers have ethical obligations. In publication of the results of research, the investigators are obliged to preserve the accuracy of the results. Negative as well as positive results should be published or otherwise publicly available." -Declaration of Helsinki. Principle 27

http://www.assert-statement.org/publication.html

Researchers have to face failure at some point in their career. When failure happens, I have always found it useful to first look at the process/cause that led to the failure. First try to decompose the process and determine if the failure was within your own control or not is important. If it was within your control, try to understand what actions led to failure. Was it a set of assumptions that turned out to be wrong? Was it a series of actions that did not occur as planned? Learning what the cause was of the failure and putting checks and balances into your processes is the only practical approach to handle failure. Most important, never lingered on a failure. When you accomplish post mortem analyses on failures, learn the process causes of the failure and take steps to not repeat them in the future could be a sensible approach to dealing with failure. Failure and stress is now common in research as well as in the social life; having a sense of humour and laughter are critical strategies to help get through, and remain positive and resilient.

It is to learn from failure but never withdraw.

Dear Ali Abdil Razzaq Muhammed Noori Aldallal:

Thank you for providing us many useful links - especially the last link about dealing with failure and stress!

Each research is based on experiments, or modeling, or compilations or... Experiments do not direct to results automatically, so failures are inevitable. It is the natural process of scientific researches to achieve good results or good knowledge. So be careful, patient and persevere in your method, or change it, or review the resolution scheme or its logic, the process or its data.

I wish to request RG friends not to take a narrow scope of meaning of failure in research as getting wrong results or "proving" some theorem by some illogical argument which is disproved by someone with a counterexample or stating a conjecture which is disproved by someone. The last case, in my view, is not a failure at all. Conjecture is just a conjecture and if someone shows it is not true, we do end up making some contribution (!) to the literature. So, this is OK. In my view, a serious problem with PhD scholars or scientists is working with a very tough open problem and we may not get any result at all. I had personally undergone this failure nearly two decades ago when I was just starting research! We may take such failures also in a positive way as we learn many papers and many techniques as byproducts.

Fixing the Project Goal is very vital, which depends on the hypothesis generation -

To formulate a specific question, problem, or conjecture, and to describ e the approach you will take to answer, solve, or test it. Often, this will take the form of an empirical hypothesis: so cial security depresses p ersonal savings; high levels of employment are related to high levels of inflation, etc. An empirical hypothesis makes a claim about how some part of the economy works, and can b e assessed by analyzing the relevant data.

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pnikolov/resources/writingtips.pdf

Research is a lengthy, sometimes tedious and even laborious process in which the researcher may perform many experiments or sometimes repeat the same experiment repeatedly unsuccessfully before finally obtaining the desired results. Failure is a normal and integral aspect of the research process. Science is all about being creative - thinking outside the box and about taking calculated risks. Failures can lead to new research ideas and new directions. Failures provide correction regarding long held but sometimes false concepts or ideas in a field. Despite being afraid of making mistakes one should try to minimize the risk of failure and maximize the likelihood of success.

Failures are stepping stones for success.

But they can also be stumbling stones. It depends a lot on the mentality and the self conception of the researcher.

Read the book "From Poverty to Power" by James Allen with interest and attention. You shall be inspired..

Success and failure are two sides of the same coin. I feel failures are the foundation of success. They are the real guides. A quote by Colson Whitehead is worth to put here.

"It is the failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect."

Scientific success is often defined by how well your experiments progress and the results you produce. However, scientific research is driven by a curiosity about the unknown, and you cannot always be prepared for the unknown.Inevitably there will come a time when your experiments fail. In this article I give you some of the best ways to deal with failed experiments and a reminder that “failures” may actually have some value hidden within.When dealing with a failed experiment, one of the best things you can do is take a break. You might be tempted to continue repeating the experiment, but there is no point jumping back into an experiment when you have not given yourself time to assess the situation; doing so will only waste time and precious samples.You are going to need time to resolve the issues with your experiment. This can be taxing on both the body and mind. So before you attempt to understand where things went wrong, consider recharging your body, and clearing your mind. Grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich, relax, and let your prefrontal cortex work away quietly on sorting out the next move. Once body and mind are recharged, it is time to focus on finding where the experiment went wrong. Was it due to poor technique, faulty equipment, or perhaps an expired reagent? The only way to know for sure is to repeat the experiment while taking note of each component. At this point, it may not hurt to have a second pair of eyes looking over your shoulder as well. Asking for assistance from a colleague is a nice way of gaining a fresh perspective from an un-biased resource. If the experiment is proving to be tricky, and continues to fail despite your greatest efforts, then perhaps it is time for a new approach. You may find yourself very stressed, and doubting your skills. However, you should find solace in knowing that you are actually progressing; the problem is likely not technical. Logic dictates that if you are not finding the correct answer, then perhaps you are asking the wrong question. It is quite rare for only one hypothesis to exist for any given problem. This is, yet again, an opportunity for you to pick the brains of your colleagues. Even within the same lab, the wealth of knowledge and experience can vary greatly allowing you to save hours of subsequent research time with only a few minutes of questions. When all is said and done, there are still times when the problems just cannot be solved despite the time, effort, and resources. This is when a scientist needs to focus less on recovering the experiment, and more on recovering themself. The physical days will come to an end, but there is always that mental side which has a nasty habit of following you home. Ideally, the best escape is whatever method allows you to forget the problem by the time you reach the welcome mat at home. This is easier said than done, but you must always remember that your experiment is neither you, nor a representation of you. The goal of science is to illuminate the dark corners of the world, and though scientists are at the forefront of this journey, we are still humans in awe of the unknown. Hence, failed experiments will always arise at the worst of times, and no one is immune. So, we must take our failures collectively with our successes. Like two sides of the same coin, their combined value only adds to our knowledge of the unknown, and should not be thought of as negative. After all, we would not know which paths are best for advancement if all paths were not ventured.

There is no 'failure' in science, just the realisation of another way not to do it.

Failure is a driver for research process!

Sometimes negative results are unexpected, but contribute to advances in science. Sometimes they’re by design, with experiments created not to produce results in the traditional sense, but to fine-tune methods and processes for the future...

https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/a-null-result-is-not-a-failure

Failure are pillar of success .Why to apply failure only for research as human being in our every day life for our working environment we have to perform our activities in the line with the action related to our activities & in certain cases it is very likely that we may have our failure & in certain cases for our failure we are also repenting .

In this line sometime s back i have my publication under the captioned '' Failure are pillars of success '' which i submit herewith for your perusal & also for our valued readers . My presentation is for me as my personal interest & for other readers as an academy interest .

This is my personal opinion 

I agree with Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan.

Regards

SM Najim

There is no failure so far as research is concerned. However, if anticipated results are not emerging out of certain study, positive reframing, acceptance and persistent effort are the most effective coping strategies for dealing with perceived failures.

The ridiculous point of view which is in the corrupt society! If your research "jumps the gun"(knowing ahead of time) and you are a human being who are not in the chain of nepotism, your research will be nothing.. Gracious, there are human beings with poor wits, who know, how they can use your research for their favor.. 

Why negative results are worthy of publication?

Researchers don’t dream of negative results, but experiments and trials that don’t go as expected are crucial for moving science forward. To highlight this important part of the research process, we asked research scientists to speak about their own experiences with “failure.” ...

https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/why-negative-results-are-worthy-of-publication

Results will never always be acceptable in research. Processes go through a lot of iterations to align for a common acceptance. It is continuous effort which brings in a narrowness towards the objective, so failures are natural for learning.

Journals and peer reviewers tend to not like manuscripts reporting null hypothesis results, or other studies in which the results did not turn out as intended.

However...there are still lessons to be learned from such studies.  Academia needs to be more open to results that are not as expected.

Failure in research actually provides opportunity for introspection and revisit to what and how we have done; what else could have been done. Therefore, failure helps in strengthening and consolidating the research endeavor. 

Early stage researchers are typically advised by more senior people on the research subject matter and reasonable goals. A good advice would provide a correct scientific step forward (may be a small one) whatever result is obtained - provided, the research was done in a professional manner, with right prior analyses, good and thorough methodology, well analyzed and presented results. It is a great danger for a young researcher at the beginning of one's career to fail in trying to reach results due to the lack of one's own experience, personal potentials, and research conditions.

More experienced scientists, who have already tested their real skills, and gained a substantial prior experience, can attack much more serious research problems by performing a valid prior risk / benefit analysis of dedicating significant time, efforts, and resources. The failures are still quite possible and happening in real life. It is a part of the learning curve - a personal and scientific one.

I did not have a great theory are the failure to teach and how to overcome!

I speak only from my own experience and, it is that it is an integral part of life and so I in science!

If the project is a good and serious preparation, I think it is a small possibility to make a mistake especially if it is something that the other workt and had positive results!

The second is if you are doing something completely new, where there are no large-scale experience and results in science in the world, there is a possibility of course much higher than in the first case!

The problem can multiply if you are separated, large funds, spent a lot of time, many experts participated and were great expectations! I'll try in the next response, when I can properly formulate soon to give your answer to this question, why is it only maybe a relative failure ...!

Why I think it is perhaps only a relative failure !?

If he invested a lot of resources, time, money, and the result is not satisfactory, of course, that this is a result of research because it shows others that in this direction do not need to go exploring-and thus can be saved a lot of resources on where I m at the beginning of writing !

And this is some research success and the result of the scientific team lals overcome failure?

Failures are virtually inseparable in most research. The key point in this context is how one can respond constructively to failures without giving rise to an anything-goes attitude. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures is very important and effective strategy for learning from failure that may translate failure into success.

Dear @Saeed, again plagiarism! Why, why, why! This is the origin of your "answer"! Why do you do it? Addiction! You have failed!

How to Deal With a Failed Experiment?

http://bitesizebio.com/11261/how-to-deal-with-a-failed-experiment/

The Science of Failure: Why Highly Successful People Crave Mistakes?

We tend to take credit for our successes, attributing them to internal factors such as how much effort we put in, the skills we have or our past experience. Failure, on the other hand, is something we don’t like to admit to. Research has shown that we are more likely to blame failure on external factors like luck or the difficulty of the task...

Luckily there are successful people around who are willing to publicly share their failures and why they consistently seek to make more mistakes...

https://blog.bufferapp.com/why-highly-successful-people-crave-failure-and-mistakes

God or luck? - It depends on only kind of reflection- the more you are intelligent the more you are unhappy in the corrupt society. 

I  am agree with answer professor Ljubomir Jacic!