30 - Own Your Errors

Summary

Several years ago, after an especially grueling review process, I got a paper accepted for publication in one of the best journals in the field. It was a big deal for me. The paper addressed an important and controversial issue, and my colleague and I had spent hundreds of hours collecting the data and hundreds more writing and revising the paper. This paper was also going to be good for my career. I had gotten tenure a few years before but had hit a publication dry spell. I needed to make something happen if I wanted to stay on track for promotion to full professor. This paper was going to give me the momentum I needed. I was elated and proud. This was one of my biggest accomplishments as a researcher to date.

One thing I have learned in my twenty or so years of doing research and writing scientific papers is that errors are unavoidable. In his book Brilliant Blunders, Mario Livio (2013) writes that 20% of Einstein’s papers contain errors. I believe it. So, as I always do when I have a paper accepted for publication, I immediately went about checking everything for accuracy. Even though I had been very careful in writing the paper before submitting it for publication, I checked every statement, every statistic, every quotation, and every reference, and when I was done, I did it again. Everything was right, and I breathed a sigh of relief. One of my worst nightmares – which will probably become one of yours if you’re just getting started in research – is to have a paper accepted for publication only to discover that I have to withdraw it because of a catastrophic error.