Comment on Negative and Positive Selection

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:32:51 GMT

People studying to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and actuaries definitely do burn out from time to time. Very likely, other professions too.

The third and fourth items don't apply so clearly to them, though. You're held responsible for a number of things that you have limited control over, and moreover they are few in number so you can't even use statistics to show how good you are at biasing them towards success with your control.

With a doctor, you see many patients. Some of them will get better. If you NEVER succeed, being a doctor isn't for you. As a researcher, it's quite possible that if your advisor has a risky research plan, then you simply won't succeed just because the objective is unachievable due to unforeseen factors, or the hypothesis is true but it would take a much larger effort than you can pay for to conclusively demonstrate it (who wants to see a P-value of 0.2? It IS suggestive...).

In non-research professions, if you are good at what you do, you will succeed. In research, you must be at least decent to succeed, and being good makes it far more likely... but not certain, or even nearly certain. It takes being really really good to figure out you're going to fail early, get out, and find something else to do.

Discuss