This week I have been working on revising a manuscript.
The manuscript went out and received a harsh review. A part of the reasons is that the reviewer was not convinced by a previous work, which is the basis of current work.
When we test hypotheses, we test them. Yet, some of the hypotheses will be determined as "untrue" after experiments/tests, even with best rationales. In many cases, nature holds something beyond our reasoning.
One way to get over with it and to endure perceived "failures" is, to know such is the nature of the game of medical science, to know a "failure" is not really a failure but another trial to get closer to truth, and to get used to it.
Hypothesis-driven science is not unlike baseball. No one hits all the time. We swing. We miss. But sometimes we hit.
In the lab, we can do trials and errors. It is a good thing for cell biology and other lab science.
Once we find something that may be "true", we further test them. Here we need to be cautious, especially when we feel like we are onto something.
We test many possibilities internally in the lab, so we become confident in the positive result.
But reviewers outside do not know how much of confirmatory experiments we have done here. Nor the amount of inputs from colleagues, pathologists, and others. All these backstage work are not considered if not shown.
In the manuscript, we did not show some data. The said reviewer assumed we did not do due diligence, and thought we knew very little about what we were showing.
Well, at first I was bummed by the review. But there is something constructive. It is a feedback by a peer after all. We need to show what we did internally but did not show. That, adding the data we did not show, is what I have been doing this week.
I need to remind myself, 'Science is "show and tell". ' When they are saying we did not show enough to convince them, we got to show some more.
