March 2023 was a bit busy month, needing to close a project and sending out three manuscripts.
Two of the manuscripts were original research, one about colon cancer and another about Alzheimer's pathology development, and each of them is going through the review process (and that is why I won't discuss any detail here). I need to cross my fingers for both.
But one of the manuscripts was an invited commentary. It could be prepared in a short time, and was accepted in 6 days. Got the news this morning.
That third manuscript, an easy publication, reminded me of a book I read recently.
It was a Japanese book, entitled "Become a millionaire in a year". The book was written by Mayuko Totsuka, claiming to be a multi-millionaire herself and a consultant for asset-building.
Just like we have to be careful with what we eat to keep our body well, we have to be careful with what we feed to our mind. That is, what we read, hear, listen and watch. Friends and influencers, too. There are enough tabloid media, con men and bogus "truth" out there.
Scientists are natural skeptics, although we do have our biases to see things.
That said, her book did not look like empty promises and BS. It was coming with interesting tips and methods for asset building that made a lot of sense.
And one of the tips was "sell something that you already know for sure where to be sold".
In business, there are super solid deals in which what you make is already determined to sell. She claims that the way, "sell something that you already know for sure where to be sold", is what super-riches are doing among them.
There are differences among solid deals, risk-taking investments, and gambling. "The rich focus on solid deals" sounds about right. We can assess to which category what we do belongs.
Anyhow, coming back to my three manuscripts, at least for this invited and accepted manuscript I did not have to cross fingers. It was a solid deal.
In contrast, I wait for two others for ongoing review processes. The outcome can be reject or major revision that may require too much efforts or extra money for additional experiments (that we may not have). They are risk-taking investments.
While I understand that the peer-review processes are for constructive feedback from other experts in the same or close research field and for improvement of the quality of science, to be honest I am not going to like too much hustle, either.
To some extent, good scientific work is there by design. Serendipity can play a role, as we found amyloid-accumulating mice and that led us to five papers so far. But we cannot depend on good luck all the time.
Her book and statuses of my three manuscripts gave me an opportunity to think about the meaning of "sell something that you already know for sure where to be sold" in the context of my line of work.
