Successes are always in the focus in your scientific career. However, failures are very common among scientists, even among the most successful ones – but only a few speak about them. To highlight that failures are part of everyone’s career, some academics published their CVs of failure, among them Johannes Haushofer, Professor at Princeton, who has an incredible “normal” CV. By publishing his CV of failure, he also start a discussion about psychological health in academia. As he mentions in a German interview with ZEIT Campus ONLINE, we do not know much about the prevalence of depression and other psychological disorders. But the few statistics existing point to, for example, a very high degree of depression among academics.
Someone who talks about changing the culture in science and how to deal with what he calls the “cloud of confusion” in a very motivating way is Uri Alon, Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. You find a couple of his talks and his magnificent songs on YouTube, for example, his TED talk in Lausanne.
