Why I’m not a fan of the “failure CV”
Last week, Princeton professor Johannes Haushofer published a CV of his failures that was rapidly covered by many news outlets.
Haushofer, as he himself acknowledged, was not the first to have this idea, but his failure CV went way more viral than those of others for whatever reason (my guess: he’s a successful white male professor at Princeton).
A lot of good things happen when traditionally successful people publicly acknowledge their failures. Failure CVs are stories of resilience, and it’s helpful to know that many brilliant scientists suffered set-backs, and confidence-shattering blows and still excelled in their fields. As I stare at my Excel spreadsheets of totally flat graphs with massive error bars, I find it reassuring to know that most people experience both ups and downs in science, and that they often encounter many downs before a few ups. Failures do not have to define a career. There is a lot of chance and (sometimes) a lot of luck involved in research, as in anything.
But I also think the “failure CV” overlooks some of the biggest problems in academia, and if anything, reinforces the traditional and problematic notions we have of “success” and “failure.”
The biggest problem with the “failure CV” is that it finds its natural counterpart in the typical “success CV.”
“Failures” are papers rejected, grants not awarded, scholarships from which one was rejected, and degree programs to which one failed to gain acceptance. And “success” then continues to be defined as all the things that typically go on a CV — papers published, grants received, awards won, and degrees attained.
The story then reads as “my paper was rejected here and here and here but it was ultimately published here.”
“I didn’t get into this program or this one or this one, but then I got a degree from this great institution instead.”
“My grant was rejected by eight foundations, but ultimately I was funded.”
But in this way the “failure CV” misses the point. The larger failures in science are those that masquerade as successes — the paper published in the prestigious journal that doesn’t do due dilligence in verifying the robustness of its findings and hides shaky claims behind a facade of certainty; the grant won but then squandered by inefficiency or the failure to let go of a pet idea; the mentee who does not receive the support he or she needs and leaves the lab feeling down every day. And even these examples still just touch the tip of the failure iceberg. Obviously no one is going to make a CV where they write, “I won this prestigious research award for my work — luckily the committee did not care that multiple people have accused me of sexual assault.” Aren’t those the failures that we should be working harder to illuminate?
Scientists admit they were successful despite failure, but they don’t acknowledge that in some cases, their successes came because they sacrificed other ideals.
I can’t help but wonder if the public attention on the “failure CV” is simply reinforcing damaging aspects of the narrative we already have about what it means to be successful in science. By publicizing certain failures, researchers acknowledge that science is hard, but they don’t challenge the notion of success the current system rewards. If anything, the victories of traditional success seem sweeter and more elusive once we learn how hard they are to attain even for the best scientists among us.
I know that CVs are not the only way in which people are judged — personal connections and recommendations are also important in establishing a good reputation amongst colleagues. But things like humility, imagination, and integrity are less easily quantified, and so we seemingly care less about them— both when they are present, and critically, when they are absent.
I would by lying if I said I do not aim for the traditional measures of success in science. Of course I do. But I have also been fortunate to have been mentored by a lot of great people (both in and out of science) who have challenged me to think about impact more broadly. What do I want to discover and how do I want that to affect people’s lives? And as I work toward that, how do I want to interact with people? These are super simple, obvious questions that I know many researchers constantly think about. But I still worry about those moments in which they are temporarily forgotten.
I think we should all keep (private) failure CVs (or something of the sort) moving forward, but not with items like rejected papers or awards not won, because I worry by focusing on such trivial, easy-to-acknowledge failures, we’ll prop up the wrong type of successes and forget to think about what actually matters.
Here’s some sample entries that I should probably include in mine:
“Made person feel shitty about their idea by being unnecessarily mean and critical.”
“When designing study, focused too heavily on what the resulting publication might look like rather than the underlying theoretical importance of the question.”
“Had sinking feeling I was not necessarily using the most appropriate statistical methods, but decided it wasn’t worth looking into more.”
“Greatly exaggerated the potential real-world impact of this study when talking to others about it, potentially perpetuating damaging misconceptions.”
I obviously don’t know how to create a culture of science that disincentivizes these types of behaviors, but I’ve met many traditionally successful scientists who seem to think about these things a lot, and they have given me hope that gradually shifting elements of the current culture may in fact be possible. But “failure CVs” are a band-aid on an infected bullet wound; they make us feel better about our surface-level shortcomings, while enabling us to ignore the deeper problems within our community.
