Academic vicious cycle

If there is a good player in sports, all teams want to draft the person as if there are no other players. This is also true in academia, as it is kind of sports, where brains play the ball. If you are in the job market, good luck. Most likely there will be a more attractive person, which gets all the interviews and you'll be left without anything. Rest assured that it is not because you're not worthy of those positions, it is that human nature, which is best explained with why all the flies are attracted to one distant star. A majority of them will fail to get the star, but this vicious cycle will go on. No one will learn a lesson. So human, so flawed. Keep your heads up and breathe. Let it go.

Is scientific failure worth ending your life?

Credit: Kyodo News / AP

It has been more than a week since Dr. Yoshiki Sasai ended his life by an apparent suicide over the controversial STAP papers. Soon we will all forget, just like we did for every other eminent scientist who took failure to a fatal result.

I kept thinking what would've made Sasai so depressed, since he wasn't the one on target (at least that's what we think). Haruko Obokata was the first author of now retracted Nature papers and she was to blame for all the misdoings.

The research area is far from my expertise and I'm more interested in how much we should take our research personally. My quick answer is not at all.

Positive thinking

I've benefitted a lot from inspirational books and suggest that you consider checking them out if you never came across one.  One powerful teaching is to do positive thinking, as much as you can. This also happens to be one of the fundamental concepts most preachers use. Let the dressings aside, the way you react to things or events will reveal your current attitude. If you are always complaining or whining about things or people, you may not have enough of the positive thinking going on in you. Of course we learn to not trust any strangers, which means we are born to trust everyone. Against our nature, we change (or forced to change) ourselves to be hateful, hypocritical beings. It is probably time to give others some credit for what they did good, and tolerate for some of their mistakes. Forgiveness is one of the pillars of positive thinking. Looking always to the bright side will make your world shiny and beautiful. And for those of you who think this is too cheesy, what on earth is worth more than your happiness (and peace of your mind)? Your career? Money? Nobel prize? Imagine this old man who always tried to get some more by bullying others and raging out of his ambitions. In the end, he will have a very distasteful life behind, with perhaps no one to remember him nicely when he is gone. The question, again, is it really worth it?

One problem at a time

We are not super humans who can multi million task and solve all the problems in a second. It is easy to get frustrated over the unfinished to-do-lists and everything else that you think prevents you from finishing those. Nobody is perfect. That means you too. And if you are having hard time in getting clogged up very often, let me tell you one thing that worked for me (and still does): handle one (1) problem (task) at a time. Choose the hardest (since that bothers you the most) and solve it (or try everything to solve it). If you cannot finish that (e.g. thesis writing) at one attempt, divide it up into chewable chunks. Let it be solvable in one sitting. Before you know it you'll be feeling like a feather.