Early-career setback and future career impact

TL;DR

This study investigates how early-career setbacks influence future scientific impact, revealing that while setbacks increase attrition, they also correlate with higher long-term research performance among persevering scientists.

Contribution

It provides novel evidence that early setbacks can enhance long-term scientific impact, challenging the notion that early success is the sole predictor of future achievement.

Findings

Near misses increase attrition risk by over 10%.

Scientists with early setbacks outperform peers in long-term impact.

Early setbacks may serve as a performance catalyst for persevering scientists.

Abstract

Setbacks are an integral part of a scientific career, yet little is known about whether an early-career setback may augment or hamper an individual's future career impact. Here we examine junior scientists applying for U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grants. By focusing on grant proposals that fell just below and just above the funding threshold, we compare "near-miss" with "near-win" individuals to examine longer-term career outcomes. Our analyses reveal that an early-career near miss has powerful, opposing effects. On one hand, it significantly increases attrition, with one near miss predicting more than a 10% chance of disappearing permanently from the NIH system. Yet, despite an early setback, individuals with near misses systematically outperformed those with near wins in the longer run, as their publications in the next ten years garnered substantially higher impact. We further find that this performance advantage seems to go beyond a screening mechanism, whereby a more selected fraction of near-miss applicants remained than the near winners, suggesting that early-career setback appears to cause a performance improvement among those who persevere. Overall, the findings are consistent with the concept that "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Whereas science is often viewed as a setting where early success begets future success, our findings unveil an intimate yet previously unknown relationship where early-career setback can become a marker for future achievement, which may have broad implications for identifying, training and nurturing junior scientists whose career will have lasting impact.