Top
SCIENCE. STORIES. IMPACT.

iBiology

Bringing the World's Best Biology to You

Learning from Failure

00:00:29.18 Hello, I am Bruce Alberts,
00:00:31.29 I am going to talk to you very briefly today
00:00:34.23 and I'm only going to make one major point.
00:00:37.14 and that is the importance of learning from failures.
00:00:42.05 I feel like I'm quite able to do this
00:00:46.00 since I have made many mistakes in my life
00:00:50.19 I think we all do, but what I want to emphasize
00:00:54.00 today is how those kinds of mistakes
00:00:56.19 represent important learning experiences.
00:01:02.02 So if you are making mistakes or have made recent mistakes,
00:01:06.02 or some recent failures, don't be discouraged,
00:01:08.27 look at that as a way of growing
00:01:12.10 and becoming wiser in the long run.
00:01:16.23 So my first slide deals with my career as a graduate student
00:01:23.22 at Harvard from 1961-1965
00:01:26.29 and as I have described here, I had a very
00:01:30.02 ambitious goal of trying to get double-helical DNA
00:01:33.21 to replicate in a test tube.
00:01:35.29 However, I only had one enzyme available
00:01:38.16 that was DNA polymerase and we now know
00:01:42.08 that DNA replication requires many proteins.
00:01:46.16 So, I made a theory about how
00:01:51.07 this one enzyme might be able to replicate double-helical DNA
00:01:54.09 I did lots of experiments
00:01:57.27 It took me five years all-in-all
00:02:00.24 to do some of these experiments,
00:02:05.25 and basically all my experiments failed.
00:02:07.23 Nevertheless, I was told that I was ready to get my Ph.D. exam
00:02:14.29 I had done side experiments that made I thought a thesis
00:02:20.01 and I went for my oral exam at Harvard
00:02:24.03 knowing that once people have been permitted to do this,
00:02:28.00 in my department, nobody had failed in recent memory.
00:02:31.27 Well, I got a shock in 1965
00:02:35.28 and it has all been described in this paper
00:02:39.19 In Nature, I published a brief paper, a little essay
00:02:46.01 on why failing my Ph.D. exam in the end,
00:02:51.28 was an important step in making a path for a successful career.
00:02:57.15 The title is "A wake-up call"
00:03:01.21 How failing a Ph.D. led to a strategy
00:03:03.08 for a successful scientific career.
00:03:06.01 I'm not going to be able to go through
00:03:08.08 all the points here, but my failure taught me important lessons about science.
00:03:16.16 Before this time, I thought I understood how to do science
00:03:20.25 I had been remarkably successful
00:03:21.22 through luck as an undergraduate
00:03:23.24 doing an undergraduate thesis and published some papers.
00:03:28.11 Success doesn't really teach you much.
00:03:31.13 Failure teaches you a lot.
00:03:34.03 I learned several important lesson about science.
00:03:39.12 First of all, we had been misled,
00:03:41.16 those of us in my era remember
00:03:44.28 Watson and Crick had been very successful
00:03:47.00 in theoretical biology and in 1953
00:03:49.19 had predicted the DNA double helix
00:03:51.17 and we thought we could go ahead being Watson and Crick
00:03:55.18 so my thesis was really predicated on
00:03:59.17 the idea that I could solve a prediction of Watson and Crick
00:04:03.27 that there was some machinery that would allow
00:04:06.04 DNA templated heredity to replication of the DNA double helix
00:04:12.07 In fact, we know now that evolution
00:04:16.29 has created an incredibly complex chemistry
00:04:19.17 and for the most part, you have to do experiments
00:04:22.07 to figure out how it works.
00:04:24.04 Now the most important thing I learned was
00:04:26.25 critical for everyone doing science
00:04:29.12 is that having a good strategy in scientific research is
00:04:33.08 the key to success, it is really the most important
00:04:36.17 thing in doing science. There are a million times more
00:04:41.14 experiments possible in a day than you should be doing
00:04:44.23 and the critical thing is how you use your limited resources.
00:04:47.20 to do those few experiments that will make progress efficiently.
00:04:53.02 And so I spent a long time before I
00:04:57.05 took my next step in science, thinking and writing about
00:05:00.18 what I would do and why, and what I wouldn't do
00:05:03.19 and one of the conclusions I made that has proved
00:05:07.15 to be very useful in my scientific career
00:05:09.24 is that I decided that I would always do an experiment
00:05:12.28 where any answer I got would advance our scientific knowledge
00:05:16.18 to at least a small extent.
00:05:18.01 Unlike my thesis, where I was trying to see whether my
00:05:20.17 theory was right or not
00:05:21.21 and when I got all these no answers my theory wasn't right,
00:05:24.00 nobody was surprised and the results didn't really add to the
00:05:30.23 store of scientific knowledge, which is of course why I
00:05:34.02 had so much trouble with my thesis exam.
00:05:35.25 So now I'm going to tell you about a second kind of failure
00:05:40.26 which turned out to be a big success,
00:05:43.19 and that is writing the textbook "The Molecular Biology of the Cell".
00:05:48.20 In retrospect, everything you do that turns out well
00:05:52.13 looks easy, and people may be misled
00:05:55.19 about how hard it is to really make something work.
00:05:58.25 So this was a near failure in fact,
00:06:03.13 I was a young scientist in 1978 at UCSF
00:06:08.13 sitting in my office, and I got a phone call
00:06:09.20 from Jim Watson, the famous Jim Watson of double helix fame
00:06:12.19 He had the right vision, he always has the right vision,
00:06:17.20 he said that was the time to unite what we know about molecules, molecular biology
00:06:23.11 with a second field that I knew nothing about really, at that time.
00:06:28.11 It was called cell biology, but it was not what we call cell biology today.
00:06:32.13 It was descriptive molecular microscopy, light microscopy
00:06:36.26 had made lots of advances at a descriptive level, in fact this was the first time
00:06:43.18 when I was writing the text book, that I learned about
00:06:47.23 the existence of the endoplasmic reticulum, now something that we try to teach
00:06:50.25 every seventh grader in California, a big mistake,
00:06:53.18 but that is another subject for another day.
00:06:55.00 At any rate, Jim always has the right vision,
00:06:59.04 but he is so optimistic about how easy anything will be
00:07:03.27 that he convinced us to do this saying that it would
00:07:07.25 take, I think, as I remember, working 1 month in the summer of 1978
00:07:14.05 and another month in the summer of 1979.
00:07:17.11 Well, as we started to do this, we realized
00:07:21.11 that we didn't know how to write a text book,
00:07:25.20 we wrote a lot of stuff in the summer of '79 was spent 2 months in
00:07:31.15 Cold Spring Harbor, it's really hot, we worked 16 hours a day, weekends
00:07:37.22 all the authors, all five of us, and what we were
00:07:43.11 producing, we realized, wasn't really useful, at least most of it.
00:07:46.06 and so we almost decided after those two summers we worked
00:07:52.29 that we should quit. Fortunately we didn't quit!
00:07:57.20 Finally, in the summer of '81, when we were working all summer again
00:08:04.07 we finally realized we had learned to do it
00:08:07.08 and from then on, it has been much much easier.
00:08:12.02 So, again, like my experience in learning how to do science,
00:08:14.28 it took a near failure, or 'a failure', to allow us to make real progress.
00:08:23.06 Well, in the end, we did succeed.
00:08:25.10 We produced so far 5 editions of this very large cell biology text book
00:08:32.11 called "Molecular Biology of the Cell"
00:08:33.18 the first edition is the black one, one of the authors kept track of time,
00:08:39.05 we spent well over 365 days working together,
00:08:42.29 12-16 hour days, weekends.
00:08:48.00 Successive editions have been easier, we learned how do to this.
00:08:51.13 The 5th edition we finally had some fun,
00:08:54.19 here, I am at the Chilean Air Force Base in Antarctica
00:08:57.12 presenting, releasing our textbook with the other authors
00:09:01.16 to the generals on the base, I think the general is a little bit mystified
00:09:07.01 as to why we were there, but at any rate, it was great fun.
00:09:11.09 As I speak, in about a month we are about to start the 6th edition of this book.
00:09:15.28 It will be my last, but it has been a great pleasure to do this
00:09:23.26 we've not only enjoyed each other, the company of the authors
00:09:29.13 but we've learned a lot, we've learned so much about cell biology,
00:09:33.18 and it has affected all of our research
00:09:34.10 both book writing and teaching are really important for creative science, I believe.
00:09:40.08 This is what it looks like
00:09:43.27 the joy of textbook writing, and why it takes so long,
00:09:48.18 our textbook, every chapter, is read and re-written by multiple authors
00:09:52.15 the first author has a go, here I think the typing is not mine
00:09:57.28 but the ink is mine and the pencil after that is somebody else
00:10:00.05 and this is the way you create a book that actually is
00:10:04.23 better than what any one author can do.
00:10:08.20 So in ending, my failures have taught me
00:10:12.14 an important general lesson about life
00:10:14.20 and first of all, don't be disappointed when you fail.
00:10:18.23 The great thing about US society is
00:10:23.02 good failures are encouraged and not a disgrace,
00:10:26.08 because that means you are trying something new and hard
00:10:28.06 but study your failures very carefully, everybody makes mistakes
00:10:32.09 but some people make mistakes over and over again the same ones,
00:10:36.07 those of us who have been successful, never make the same type of mistake twice.
00:10:40.22 That means we think carefully about what we learned, we write it down,
00:10:44.08 and as an important general point
00:10:45.21 , this is why older people are valued as mentors for younger people,
00:10:51.03 we've made so many mistakes we have a certain wisdom
00:10:53.23 from learning from our errors
00:10:59.15 and I think mentoring younger people is a valuable experience,
00:11:03.01 which gets me to my last point,
00:11:04.20 a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, the famous wife of
00:11:10.24 US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt
00:11:13.11 she said, "Learn from the mistakes of others
00:11:16.22 You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."
00:11:21.11 Thank you.

This Talk
Speaker: Bruce Alberts
Audience:
  • General Public
  • Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
  • Student
  • Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
  • Researcher
  • Educators
Recorded: May 2010
More Talks in Tips for Science Trainees
All Talks in Tips for Science Trainees

Talk Overview

Alberts declares “Success doesn’t really teach you much, failure teaches you a lot.” Speaking from his personal experience, Alberts asserts that all scientists make mistakes and suffer setbacks but learning from failure is what allows one ultimately to succeed.

Speaker Bio

Bruce Alberts

Bruce Alberts is currently the Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, and served as Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine (2008-2013), President of the National Academy of Sciences (1993-2005), and United States Science Envoy (2009-2011). Alberts, who has dedicated his career to promoting science education and international… Continue Reading

More Talks in Professional Development

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

iBiology and iBiology Courses are part of the Science Communication Lab (SCL). Our mission remains the same, to connect people to science. However, our focus has shifted to producing and evaluating cinematic films for education and the public, which you can find on the Science Communication Lab website. For more information, please see this blog post!