The impact of early career setbacks on future success.

[Michael Oberdorfer]

A recent article in Nature Communications reports on a study which examines the impact of early career setbacks on junior scientists.  The study focussed on first time applicants for NIH R01 grants that just missed getting funded versus first time applicants that narrowly achieved funding. It seems that over time those who experienced an early career setback did better than those who narrowly achieved funding over the longer haul.

The study concludes, "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger...and may have broad implications for identifying, training and nurturing young scientists."

Your thoughts?

  

[Gabriella Panuccio]

I am proudly an example of doing better by not getting funded The very first important application for me was my Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, among the most competitive fellowships in EU for post-docs. This rejection gave me the invaluable opportunity to do 2 of the most important milestones in my life: first, while waiting to re-apply, I got a 2-year post-doc in a computational neuroscience lab, the lab of one of my Science heroes (how lucky I am!); (2) I cleared my mind of what was fundamental to achieve in my fellowship and, based on that, I have refined the proposal... FUNDED! That fellowship helped me achieve the very first proof of concept of what is my scientific vision... And thanks to that, I have also expanded my network and I was eventually awarded a second Marie Curie Fellowship (mission: impossible...)... But then, inspired by the first fellowship, I wrote what was going to becoming my biggest grant ever so far, which entitled me to becoming a PI with my own line of research (equivalent to a tenure track position). I got big millions from the EU to pursue my dream in Science and I can't stop thanking the European Commission for having rejected my first fellowship.

So, all in all, I believe that rejections may, in a way, help do better, because they push us to think more in depth and stay focused on the main point of our grant application.