The PostDocs Forum

By: Gautham N.

Journal of Errology was launched last month with an aim of providing a medium for researchers to share experiences learned through those unpublished futile hypotheses, errors, iterations, negative results, false starts and other original stumbles that are part of a larger successful research in biological sciences. Still in its beta stage, this is the first journal of its kind, which focuses on the experience side of a research, which is often overlooked.

Almost every researcher has to face his share of disappointments and struggles in order to obtain the results he or she is aiming for. In the end perseverance ultimately pays off and the required results are obtained, but the cost is huge in terms of time, resources, patience and effort. Most research proposals do not go as planned and changes course mid-way. Hundreds of iterations fail or fall short of the expected outcome, taking with them time, resources and effort. Research and development is essentially a process of trial and error, these trials and errors are what lead to the final success, and are also what makes up a researcher’s experience. Experience is very valuable in research; this is what differentiates a senior researcher from a student just out of college. However these trials suffer the fate of ending up in lab notes and never seeing daylight or being shared with other researchers.

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

- Barry LePatner

“Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom.”

- Phyllis Theroux

Mentors pass on their experiences to their students, by warning them about the areas that they need to stay away from and the pitfalls that they need to look out for. However, there is no such medium where a researcher can do the same on a global scale. We live at a time when a teenager is able to share with the entire world what he/she had for dinner, or share videos of kittens; however, there is no effective medium to share these experiences. Humans are the only species in the known universe who are capable of learning from each other’s experiences. It makes no sense that budding researchers have to make the same mistakes that their predecessors have already made.

All articles on Journal of Errology are citable, making it easy to give authors the credit for their work and also measure his or her impact by modern impact measurement tools, such as Total-Impact. Also, the author can benefit in the form of inputs, feedback, new directions and encouragement from other researchers who understand what it is to be in the author’s place. There is no researcher who has achieved success without his fair share of failures.  If a researcher has never faced disappointments, then he has probably never attempted something different or challenging enough.

“If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.”

- Frank Wilczek

The chief aim of Journal of Errology is to save a researchers time, effort and resources. It is particularly alarming that the average age at which researchers and inventors make significant contribution to their field is increasing i.e. are becoming unproductive in early ages. The same is the case with the age of Nobel Prize winners in Medicine. Even when considering that researchers today have a lot more to grasp, the shift in average age is alarming.

Journal of Errology is an open access repository, which is in its experimental stages, with a long way to go before it is what the creators want it to be. From finding editors to getting the website out of Beta stage, a lot is still left to be done. The journal is open to suggestions, support and opinions of any kind. The ultimate goal is to convince every author of successful published articles in the past decade to share the story behind their success that very few people know. It is a product by the team of BioFlukes, an organization that identifies bottlenecks in research and provides tools that can streamline them.

Gautham is the Co-founder of BioFlukes. Along with Mahboob Imtiyaz he is working to create unique tools aimed at accelerating discoveries in the area of life science. With a background in Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering, Gautham is set out to engineer the way information is shared, decisions made and recruitment done in the area of life sciences. For any queries or further information he can be reached at gautham@bioflukes.com.