Charting a course through the Desert of Failure

Researchers are smart. They know stuff and they know how to generate new knowledge. But that's not enough to make a great scientist, because great science often takes a long time. There are precious few dopamine hits in science. A few that I can think of are:

• Making a breakthrough discovery
• Getting a paper accepted into a prestigious journal
• Giving a conference presentation and getting positive feedback
• Seeing students really understand a concept for the first time
• Sharing science with the public in a way that they obviously appreciate
• Applying basic research to solve a real-world problem and seeing tangible benefits

But, these things are not frequent. I'm sure many of you are painfully aware of how infrequent they are. But these are the tings that keep us going, as scientists. These occurrences are like oases in the 'Desert of Failure', which is where much of a researcher's life is spent. This desert is filled with dead-ends, rejected manuscripts, limited or no feedback on presentations (leaving you wondering if you actually made any sense), students who don't seem to 'get it' (or, at least, don't appreciate fully the thing you are trying to teach them), lack of understanding from the public and attempts to apply research that don't end up benefitting as many people as you'd hoped.

To be a great scientist, you have to be able to navigate from oasis to oasis in the Desert of Failure; being intelligent and knowledgeable is not enough; you also have to have the persistence to keep pushing toward the next oasis, even when you are not sure where it might be or when you might get there.