Mistakes in academia: to be avoided, or to be handled?
What do the flight industry, nuclear power plants and academia have in common?
All of these institutions have to deal with mistakes and their consequences as part of their normal mode of operation. To err is human, and as a result, human mistakes will continue to be a part of any human activity.
This is common knowledge; yet not all of these institutions have equally accepted this fact. In the flight industry, risk management is an ever-present reality. All systems in an aircraft have been conceived to be redundant and, as much as possible, idiot-proof. Each time an incident takes place in the airplane industry, it is analyzed so as to evaluate its causes and how to prevent similar events in the future, for instance according to the Swiss cheese model.

This is why flying is safer than ever nowadays. Similarly, the power plant industry is very aware of risks, and risk management is an important part of power plant designs. For both of these industries, it is understandable why such stringent measures are taken. The consequences of an accident during a flight or in the running of a power plant can be and have been disastrous, causing loss of human life, destruction to property, and sometimes even long-lasting damages to landscapes.
As a result, mistakes and their consequences are consciously considered and spoken of in those environments. The post hoc analysis of coincidence can identify risk factors for these. As a result, solutions can be developed to prevent repeating the same mistakes. This awareness and management of error have been called Error Management Culture (EMC)2. and it is what allows us to safely and confidently enjoy the benefits of abundant electricity, commercial flight and modern medicine.
Errors in Academia
Yet, what about the consequences of academic mistakes? Some medical scandals have become widely known, yet they have not had the same cultural impact as plane crashes. The medical research industry has adapted in response—but what about the rest of academia? What about the humanities?
If asked to identify a mistake they have committed recently in the course of their work, many academics would be hard-pressed to think of something, if they would even admit to it. One mistake that could commonly come up would be that they forgot to back up the data and lost some as a result. That is when research data management comes into play. As one’s research data is the most important thing a researcher could have, preserving it is of the utmost importance.
To that end, academia needs to consider its Error Management Culture. Most often, error management is seen as simply avoiding to make mistakes. That is of course not realistic; a more pragmatic approach would be to assume that mistakes will happen, and to consider how they should best be handled within academia.
Not all academic mistakes are made equal. They can have more or less severe consequences, but can also be more or less ethically reprehensible in regard to good research practices. Mistakenly publishing private personal data acquired today in the context of a research project is obviously much worse than mistakenly publishing personal data of historical figures. Plagiarism is obviously much worse from an ethical standpoint than mistakenly putting the wrong units on a scientific measurement.
In their paper on the importance of errors in data-driven research, Error needs culture! Exploring the relationship between error culture and openness,3 authors Maximilian Frank, Bernhard Miller, Johannes Vosskuhl, Sandra Zänkert, Felicitas Heßelmann and John Jolliffe defined a distinction between different types of academic mistakes. They distinguish three categories of errors, which can be put on a spectrum from most benign to most reprehensible:
The first category is called Honest Errors (HEs): these “are entirely unintentional, made in the belief that all the requirements of good research practice have been followed”.4 These errors can be minor, such as typos when entering data, but can still have major consequences.
Then come Questionable Research Practices (QRPs). These are errors that can be attributed to being less rigorous methodologically, or and can be more or less deliberate, while still being on the spectrum of what are considered acceptable research practices. The authors give the following examples of QRPs: “[…] practices such as favourable rounding of p-values, undocumented exclusion of outliers in statistical analysis, selective reporting of variables or altering hypotheses after results are known”.5
Finally, the most egregious types of academic mistakes are both willful and go against best research practices; these are called Fabrication and Falsification and Plagiarism (FFPs), which are self-explanatory.

This classification seems fairly straightforward. However, the authors themselves underline the difficulty than can arise when trying to classify an academic mistake:7
“Additionally, we propose that intent is the deciding factor whether flawed research is classified as cHE, QRP or FFP: the same act—for example, leaving a particular publication uncited—may be FFP (plagiarism), QRP (deliberate omission) or HE (not knowing about it). The true intention of an author is decisive to correctly classify this omission as either HE, QRP or FFP. “
Indeed, intent is key in this classification, which has a strong moral component, judging some errors as more severe than others. While not many academics spend much time considering the culture of error in their respective subjects, it is obvious to all that plagiarism would be considered a grave offense and lead to a loss of reputation for the researcher if discovered.
For all categories of mistakes, there are possible consequences if these come to light: from the minor annoyance of having to issue an erratum for an Honest Error, to the threat of loss of reputation, credibility, or even of career opportunities, for severe QRPs or FFPs.8
Must researchers therefore live in fear of having made a mistake, and if so, of it being discovered? That is of course not what academia should aim for. As is the case for most issues, prevention is better than cure. Which means that academic mistakes must be accepted and expected as a normal part of the research process. What every researcher or research institution therefore needs is a healthy outlook on error management.
Academia as a whole needs to be more open and adaptable to mistakes. The blog Retraction Watch9 has created a database of retracted papers and severely critiques the lack of transparency around many cases of retractations. Yet it also lists and praises cases where researchers denounced and retracted their own papers after making a mistake, in the category “doing the right thing”.10It is clear however, when reading through the blog, that mistakes and retracted papers are still a taboo in academia. That is a problem, as articles based on faulty research perpetuate false results and create a flawed foundation for future research.
It is thus up to us as researchers to ask ourselves: what type of Error Management Culture do we want in academia? How do we want to shape academic culture in that regard? In an academic culture that values truth, openness should not be limited to open science, but should also include openly discussing mistakes that have been made. This should begin with clear standards of good research practices within a lab or a research project, so as to avoid mistakes born simply out of neglect or out of cutting corners. It should also involve having senior academics lead by example: sharing instances of when they made mistakes themselves, and making it clear that confessing to having made a mistake will not be penalized within the group.
Moreover, some easy error management techniques can be taken from the flight industry and easily implemented in a research project.
First and foremost: there should be a process for any member of the group to report mistakes. This process should be both easy and known to every member of the team, and could be something as simple as writing an e-mail to one’s superior. Additionally, regular meetings could include a “mistakes were made” section where this topic could be discussed openly and with little pressure.
Secondly, hierarchy should not hold one back from reporting a superior’s mistake. Research group leaders should encourage their group members to question them and proofread their work. Beyond encouraging rigorous research at large, this could be hugely beneficial if a mistake is found internally, rather than through external peer review.
Thirdly, after a mistake has been made, identified and reported, it should be looked into. Any factors that could have contributed to the mistake (for example a lack of clarity in research protocols, language confusion, or human factors such as tiredness) need to be identified. If possible, protocols should be created and implemented to prevent mistakes which are particularly common or have the most severe consequences.
Based on these ideas, what do our readers think? Do you believe that academia has a productive Error Management Culture, especially in the humanities? Can you think of concrete ways to improve your team’s Error Management Culture? At the end of the day, most researchers are already committed to ethical and rigorous research, but it might just take a bit more awareness around the topic of errors to bring us forward. In academia and beyond, we should all aspire to not let our mistakes hold us back, but rather to learn from them and improve going forward.
Cover image: Jordan, Brett. In: Unsplash (19.05.2021), https://unsplash.com/de/fotos/braune-holzerne-buchstabenbuchstabenblocke-ehKaEaZ5VuU [last accessed on: 23.03.2026].
- In: Safety-II: the brand new concept of the “complex” Swiss Cheese Model 2/2 (09.04.2019), https://www.cefa-aviation.com/safety2-swiss-cheese-model-lessons-learned/ [last accessed on : (23.03.2026)]. Used with kind permission from the CEFA AVIATION SAS. [↩]
- Maximilian Frank, Bernhard Miller, Johannes Vosskuhl, Sandra Zänkert, Felicitas Heßelmann, John Jolliffe; Error needs culture! Exploring the relationship between error culture and openness. R Soc Open Sci. 1 February 2026; 13 (2): 242233. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242233, pp. 7-8. [↩]
- Maximilian Frank, Bernhard Miller, Johannes Vosskuhl, Sandra Zänkert, Felicitas Heßelmann, John Jolliffe; Error needs culture! Exploring the relationship between error culture and openness. R Soc Open Sci. 1 February 2026; 13 (2): 242233. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242233. [↩]
- id., p. 6. [↩]
- id., p. 5. [↩]
- Cham, Jorge. In: The Actual Method (16.09.2006), https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=761 [last accessed on: 23.03.2026]. [↩]
- Maximilian Frank, Bernhard Miller, Johannes Vosskuhl, Sandra Zänkert, Felicitas Heßelmann, John Jolliffe; Error needs culture! Exploring the relationship between error culture and openness. R Soc Open Sci. 1 February 2026; 13 (2): 242233. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242233, p. 4. [↩]
- id., pp.5-6. [↩]
- Retraction Watch, https://retractionwatch.com/ [last accessed on: 23.03.2026]. [↩]
- Category: doing the right thing. In: Retraction Watch, https://retractionwatch.com/ [last accessed on: 23.03.2026]. [↩]
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Laure Sigalla (21. April 2026). Mistakes in academia: to be avoided, or to be handled? Vigilanzkulturen. Abgerufen am 15. Mai 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/163mw
