The case for embracing trial-and-error in health research: Rethinking failure and uncertainty as foundations of progress

Abstract

Uncertainty is a daily reality in the health domain. Clinicians routinely face it when diagnosing patients, predicting outcomes, and selecting treatments in partnership with patients. Patients and their families, in turn, experience uncertainty about their condition and what the future may hold. Biomedical and clinical researchers aim to reduce this uncertainty through rigorous research, but not all of it succeeds. As others have argued, tolerating uncertainty may be one of medicine’s next revolutions (Simpkin & Schwartzstein, 2016), yet the process of trial-and-error in science remains underacknowledged and underexplored. Sharing failures can save time and resources, ultimately improving patient outcomes. Still, most failed research disappears into the proverbial file drawer (Feng et al., 2024; Turner et al., 2022), leaving valuable lessons unlearned.