There is still hope for us... or is there?

At least half of the NRS crew attended Bruce Alberts' talk last week on "Science and Future of the World." Vague, indeed, but that's what you can call your talk if one of your current jobs (besides being the editor in chief of our quasi-competitor) was decided by our fearless commander-in-chief.

Yes, we all felt inadequate after reading his bio in the program and hearing his introduction. What is his key to success? Is it hidden in the contents of Molecular Biology of the Cell (4th edition is my personal fave)? The answer came within the first few slides of the talk. Of course, failure is the key to success! And no, not failure of the PQE as we all dreaded in the very recent past, but worse, failure of the PhD, as was heart-breakingly covered in this Real Nature editorial.

We at NRS are committed not only to thorough research and hard-core investigation, but also to raising your self-esteem. There are many other scientific failures-turned-successes. For example, a brilliant PI/collaborator of ours may not have passed his/her PhD qualifying exam back in the day. Albert Einstein failed his college entrance exam. I attended another talk recently by a Big Deal in my field (ie, no one else's) whose first big NIH grant was rejected with the comment, "We seriously doubt your abilities as an independent investigator." And as if he read my mind about the latest NRS topic, my fellow journalist's great-grand-PI (you know, the one who discovered Ras and Rb) told us this very night that he got a D in MIT's intro bio class, which he currently teaches, when he took it as an undergrad (Kat, tell me you did better than that?).

Want to preemptively fail to guarantee your chances of success in the future? Then follow the directions in "How to get your paper rejected." Excerpt: "Number 6: The paper has been rejected by the editor of a journal and it is now submitted to another journal without substantive changes...This makes the editor angry and personally offended (PO'd)!!" Further scrutiny reveals that the journal is Pediatric Pulmonology, which probably couldn't publish the real meaning of PO'd.

So don't feel too skeptical as we all embark on this upcoming slump year. You will bounce back too! Even this guy*, according to his updated wiki page.






*Are you still curious about the General's origins? Remember the bit about the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Lab from the above article? Guess who took over not_NobelPrizeWinner's old office? Why yes, it's Father General!