When making mistakes in not a bad thing

Sorry I made a mistake In Germanybased psychologist Julia Rohrers world where research is king these words of apology invite nothing but shame and stigma To say that your study has a few loopholes could mean a whole lot of things especially that you are a failure But research is all about trial and error the very idea of getting it correct all the time could defeat the purpose and process of research says RohrerWhat this has created is a science that is noncredible where imperfect findings are lauded and celebrated as the truth until someone finally cracks In 2016 Dana Carney associate professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Business actually did Six years after the publication of a widely read study that Carney had coauthored which showed that taking a moment alone before an important meeting to assume one of two power poses could boost your selfconfidence she had come out and questioned its validityJayaram EaswaranCarneys admission became an entry point for Rohrers project Loss Of Confidence an unusual confession platform which is now gaining steam among psychologists What Rohrer a personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development is trying to do is getting her peers to openly admit to flaws in their research Until last month Rohrer and team were still accepting submissions on their website The aim she says is to start a new culture where selfcorrection is valued as much as successPlatform for selfcorrectionWhen Rohrer led the project in 2017 she remembers that the public response to it had been overwhelmingly positive But only a few social scientists came out and shared statements about loss of confidence in their research This shows that people are generally reluctant says Rohrer There could be many reasons for this People are concerned about their jobs or that sometimes they dont want to jeopardise the careers of coauthors They also fear being perceived as a sloppy researcher she saysShabnam AggarwalThe other reason is the fierce competition to bring something new to the table mdash a problem plaguing most professions In certain fields of psychology we tend to get rewarded for coming up with flashy findings that look perfect Competition for jobs and grants is cutthroat so people might feel pressured to produce certain results against their own convictions she saysBut Rohrer finds most of these fears unfounded Till now those who have published their statements with us havent spoken about facing negative consequences I personally feel that the fear of the consequence is often exaggerated The public reaction or response to selfcorrection is often positive and accepting Rohrer was particularly impressed with the admission by Tal Yarkoni a research associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who participated in their project He described his study on decision making as absurd and his theoretical explanations as being ludicrous in their simplicity and naiveteacute It must have taken great degree of honest selfreflection of his own work to arrive at this statement she saysWhile the Loss of Confidence team hopes to create a safe space for academics to discuss their mistakes they understand that public confessions are never easy This is no closed room where a private exchange is taking place When I think of a safe space for scientific selfcorrection I think about a community where a healthy conversation can take place around selfcorrection The idea is to create a cultureNeed to reward mistakesGurgaonbased author mentor and management consultant Jayaram Easwaran while lauding Rohrers initiative says such efforts need to be extended to the corporate space where one is more often than not penalised for making a mistake There are exceptions of course Here he recalls an incident that took place in the 1980s when he was heading corporate marketing for Eicher Group At the time I had messed up on something badly I was so ashamed that I wanted to bury my head in the sand But instead of sacking me the MD Vikram Lal explained to me what had gone wrong and how I could have averted it says Easwaran who speaks of this in his new book Inside the CSuiteThe positive reinforcement he says took him a long way Easwaran also cites how a friend G Raghavan CEO with real estate company Bhartiya City in Bengaluru has started an innovative measure to help in course correction During construction there can be accidents as well as near misses Often employees fear reporting near misses They dont realise that this could snowball into something bigger later To avoid this Raghavan has started rewarding his employees with incentives if they report nearmisses The company then reviews these cases This is a clear case of how you can get people to admit to their mistakes without fear or backlash he saysRwandabased Shabnam Aggarwal who wrote about her failed entrepreneurial journey after she left her cushy Wall Street job in the US to launch a startup in India in her book Freedom to Fail says the stigma around failure is so huge that people refuse to even have a conversation about it Even when I was writing the book my family wasnt sure why I wanted to talk about how my startup failed They were worried that I was letting failure define me But its just me accepting that I have failed and that I will fail again and understanding that is important If we dont talk about it we are only going to raise ourselves into believing that our mistakes are bad when in fact they can be a learning toolCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates