The importance of failure

The results are in: the aphid-repelling wheat which caused the Rothamsted protests of 2012 doesn’t actually repel aphids in the field. Despite success in the lab, the field trial showed no reduction in aphid numbers.

An interesting analysis in Nature points out that history is written by the winner. In science, however, there are many fails behind every success.

Failure is a huge part of science, and indeed of life. If you’re not failing, and learning from those failures, you’re probably not aiming for a big success. In my day job I’ve recently put together some videos of science Nobel Laureates talking about failure. They’re well worth a listen.

The next step for the aphid wheat is every scientist’s favourite: more experiments. The idea certainly isn’t being thrown out – one suggestion is the need for a closer imitation of the aphid alarm pheromone being used as the repellent.

If the protestors had managed to prevent the trial from happening, they would have deprived us of evidence that this crop, at least as it is currently, won’t deliver the benefits we’d hoped.

The only regret I have in this story is that such a huge amount of money had to be wasted on security when it could have been spent on research.