On why we panic about typos, reviewers, and other imaginary career-ending disasters.

By Jenifer Pendiuk Gonçalves, PhD | Founder of The Empath Advisor

October 2025

Let me tell you a little academic gossip.

No, not the “who’s dating who at the conference” kind. More like the kind that happens in our heads at 2 a.m. when we’re staring at our papers.

I had a work break around lunch time, as usual. I sat on the couch while my food was in the microwave, and picked up my phone to see the news (gossip). Then I saw a WhatsApp message from one of my scientist friends, let’s call her Georgia. She had just received the final proof of her very first big research paper. A top journal in her field. First try. Dream scenario, right? Champagne-worthy.

But instead of celebrating, she was panicking. Here’s the chat that followed:

* I was laughing at this point. Georgia is such a brilliant researcher, super smart, efficient, productive… that I forgot the poor thing was new to the game Hahahahaha

* A joke, of course. Please don’t seriously call me that.

* As a good friend that I am… here’s the content on it =)

This is what fascinates me: Georgia had already won. Paper accepted. Top journal. Game over. But the fear was still there, gnawing. She was afraid of overseeing details (things like the number of technical replicates in each experiment).

And if you’ve ever written anything (not just a research paper, but an email to your boss, a PhD application, even a clumsy love letter) you probably know this fear too. That tiny voice whispering “What if I missed something? What if they judge me? What if one mistake ruins everything?”

Spoiler: it won’t. But that doesn’t stop the panic spiral, does it?

So why does Georgia’s panic feel so familiar? Because it’s not just her, it’s all of us.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stared at something I wrote (paper, thesis, even a silly text message) and thought “Wait, what if there’s a mistake? What if everyone sees it and thinks I’m an amateur?”

And here’s the paradox: most of the time, the better the work is, the louder that fear gets. Georgia had done a fantastic study, with brilliant data and solid writing. Already accepted. And still, the brain was screaming “DANGER. REPUTATION AT RISK.”

It makes no sense, right? Logically, she had zero reason to panic. But fear of judgment is not logical. It’s emotional.

It’s the academic version of walking out of the house, checking if you locked the door, walking back in, checking again, and then… wondering about it all day. Even though you KNOW you locked it.

Academia has a way of amplifying this fear. Deadlines are brutal, reviewer comments can be harsh, and the unspoken culture says “One mistake will be the end of your career”. (Almost) Nobody actually says this out loud, but we all feel it.

And it doesn’t only happen with papers.

Ever overthink a presentation slide because one bullet point “looked weird”?
Re-read an email five times before hitting send, in case you wrote “pubic” instead of “public”? (If you did send something wrong like that, pleeeease tell me, it must be legendary)
Or stayed awake the night before a conference talk, rehearsing the opening sentence as if your entire credibility rested on it?

Yeah, same energy.

The truth is: this fear feels real because it is real in our bodies. The heart races, the stomach knots, the mind goes into overdrive. It’s not about whether the mistake is actually catastrophic. It’s about what our inner critic tells us will happen if it is.

Spoiler: usually nothing happens. But in the moment, it feels like everything.

The shadow in the room

Alright, let’s talk psychology for a second. But don’t worry, this isn’t a textbook moment. This is me sharing how I understand it, in plain human words…

Carl Jung (was a Swiss psychiatrist and thinker who loved exploring the hidden side of the human mind) had this idea of the shadow. Not the creepy horror-movie type, more like the parts of ourselves that we prefer to hide. The messy, imperfect, “please-don’t-let-anyone-see-this” bits.

In academia, guess what often lives in that shadow?

Our fear of not being smart enough.
Our terror of making mistakes.
That little voice saying “If they find out I don’t know everything, I’m done”.

So what do we do? We cover it up with perfectionism. We polish, re-polish, and re-re-polish every detail as if being flawless could save us from being “exposed.”

But the problem is that the more we hide the shadow, the more power it has over us. It’s like trying to hold a beach ball under water. Exhausting. And it always pops back up at the worst moment.

This is why someone like Georgia (who had already succeeded, already proven herself with a paper accepted in a top journal) still panicked at the final proof. Her shadow wasn’t impressed by the acceptance letter. It was busy whispering “But what if you missed something? What if they see you’re not perfect?”

And then comes the projection part (another Jung-y word, but don’t run away yet). Projection in this case just means that we assume other people will judge us the same way our inner critic does. So if your inner critic says “You’re sloppy, you’ll ruin everything”, you start believing everyone else must be thinking that too. Even though… they’re not.

Think about it, when you read a paper that has a correction notice, do you think less of the authors? Probably not. You might feel curious for five seconds, then shrug and move on. But in our heads, the shadow screams “If this happens to me, my reputation will burn to the ground”.

See the madness? The shadow isn’t logical. It’s emotional. And unless we shine a light on it, it runs the show from the dark corner of the room.

Where does this come from?

Okay, so if this fear isn’t logical… where does it actually come from?

Let’s be honest, most of us didn’t wake up one day, mid-PhD, and suddenly think “Oh wow, I’d love to be terrified of mistakes for the rest of my career”. No…this stuff gets planted early.

Maybe you had a super demanding parent or teacher who only praised you when you brought home the perfect grade, the gold medal, the flawless project. If you got 98%, they’d point out the missing 2. (Thanks for the trauma, Dad/Miss Whoever)

Or maybe you grew up in an environment where mistakes weren’t seen as “part of learning” but as “evidence that you’re not good enough.”
Fast forward to adulthood, and now you’re triple-checking your manuscript like your career depends on it.

And then comes academia, which (let’s face it) isn’t exactly a gentle space. It rewards perfection. It glamorizes the “flawless” paper in the “biggest” journal. It trains us to believe that being perfect = being worthy.

So academia just hands all those old childhood echoes a microphone and says “Sing louder!”

And the wild part, though, is that this perfectionism often kicks in before the moment of judgment. But Georgia’s paper had already been accepted. She was in. There was no rejection left to fear. And yet… her brain was still panicking.

That’s how you know it’s not about logic, but about emotional conditioning. It’s like fear gets wired into our nervous system… perfectionism is muscle memory.

It’s NOT all on you

Here’s something I wish someone had tattooed on my lab bench years ago: you are never the only one responsible for what gets published.

Yes, you wrote the paper. Yes, you might have been the one up at 3 a.m. wrestling with figure legends while eating cold pizza. But once that manuscript goes out into the world, it’s not just your baby anymore.

It’s a collective creation… Your supervisor read it. Your co-authors approved it. The reviewers gave their (sometimes brutal, sometimes vague) comments. And the editor gave the final green light.

If a mistake slips through? It’s on all of them too. It’s a team oversight, not a personal crime.

And corrections are actually built into the system. Journals literally have a whole category for them. Nobody invented that section to ruin your reputation. It exists because science is done by humans → Humans make mistakes → Science corrects itself. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But here’s where it gets funny… When it’s our own paper, we imagine a global scandal if a typo survives. Yet when we see a correction in someone else’s paper, we simply glance at it, might get curious for five seconds, and then we move on. No one throws shade at the authors. Nobody whispers at conferences “Did you see that correction? Their career is over!”

The truth is, the drama exists almost entirely in our own heads. We care desperately about our own mistakes, but barely register anyone else’s.

So maybe it’s time to zoom out and remember that publication isn’t a one-person show. It’s a chorus. And if the chorus misses a note, the concert doesn’t end.

The perfectionism trap (before and after acceptance)

Perfectionism is sneaky. It shows up in different costumes depending on where we are in the process.

Before submission, it’s that obsessive pressure to make everything flawless so the reviewers don’t reject us. Every figure must be pristine, every sentence polished, every comma in its place. The underlying thought is “If this isn’t perfect, they’ll find a reason to say no”.

After acceptance, you’d think the pressure would vanish. Paper accepted. Champagne popped. Done deal, right? Nope. The fear just changes clothes. Suddenly it’s “What if the proof has a mistake? What if people notice after publication? What if my shiny new paper is forever stained by a correction?”

That’s what happened with Georgia. Her paper was accepted in a top journal, first try, basically the academic jackpot. And yet, instead of relief, she was panicking over the proof. No rejection left to fear, but still convinced one mistake could ruin it all.

This is the trap: perfectionism doesn’t care about logic. It doesn’t care that you already succeeded. It’s an emotional reflex, not a rational one.

And here’s where I’ll share one of the best pieces of advice I ever got. I was stuck on a project (don’t even remember what exactly, probably circling the same draft over and over, afraid to move forward), and my supervisor looked at me and said:

“You have to let go of perfectionism. Just do whatever is possible.”

At first, I thought “Excuse me? Aren’t we scientists supposed to aim for perfection?”

But the truth hit me… If you don’t start somewhere, you’ll never have anything to improve. Imperfect work can evolve. Nonexistent work can’t.

That advice saved me. It reminded me that science improves through repeated cycles of testing, correcting, and refining. Not by producing perfect results the first time.

Progress > perfection. Every time.

So whether it’s before submission or after acceptance, remember: the voice of perfectionism is not there to protect you. It’s there to trap you. And the best way out is usually to hit “send”, let it exist, and improve it later if needed.

Because the trap only holds you if you keep circling inside it.

Reframing the fear

So… if perfectionism is a trap and the shadow is always whispering in the background, what do we do with all this fear?

My suggestion is that we stop trying to erase it, and instead… we reframe it.

First, remember that mistakes are part of the scientific process. Corrections don’t kill careers. They’re literally how science improves. The only thing that really wrecks a career is deliberate dishonesty. And most of us are the opposite of that, we care too much.

Second, try flipping the perspective. When someone else publishes a correction, you don’t roll your eyes and think “Wow, what an amateur”. You probably think “Huh, interesting”, and then you move on with your day. What if you could offer yourself that same level of kindness?

Third, instead of letting the shadow run wild, try shining a little light on it. Notice the voice that says “You must be perfect”. And then answer back “Actually, progress matters more than perfection”. It won’t silence the shadow completely, but it makes the voice less scary.

Reframing doesn’t mean pretending you don’t care, or that mistakes feel good. It means recognizing that fear is emotional, not logical, and that you get to choose whether to believe it.

Because at the end of the day, the real danger isn’t a typo in your proof. The real danger is letting fear of typos steal your joy in the work you’ve done.

So, next time you feel the terror of reviewers creeping in, pause and ask yourself:

Am I actually afraid of their judgment… or of my own?

Because honestly, most of us aren’t half as harsh with others as we are with ourselves. Corrections don’t end careers. Typos and small mistakes don’t erase brilliant research. But perfectionism can erase your joy faster than any reviewer comment ever will.

And if you’re thinking right now:

“Jen, but I do judge other people all the time.”

Well… let’s just say we can work on that in another therapy session. 🤭

For now, relax. Nobody’s career has ever been destroyed by a missing comma.

When perfectionism crashes the party: Why every mistake feels like the end