Well, the new year 2019 has started, and about half a month has lapsed. I was thinking hard about what to say to my students and fellows. Then I came across this article “Scientific progress is built on failure“, and realized that this is exactly the words that I would like to tell them. We had spent more than half a year (after two rounds of review) to get a manuscript published but at the end, we received rejection. Failure is something that all scientists experience. Learning how to handle failure is just part of our scientific life. We shall learn that persistence and resilience are the most powerful skills in the face of failed experiments, rejected manuscripts and unfunded grant applications. I hope you all will embrace great success in the new year. If so, congratulations and your success was earned! And for those of us getting bad news: accept it, deal with it and make new progress.

Good science can require a leap in the dark — and that leap might not be made if we’re too afraid to fail. Credit: Getty