Ok before you either wanna be scientists or aggressive scientists slaughter this question and tell me how little I know about science, let me explain my thoughts.
Obviously if you're wrong in an experiment it narrows down what could be the answer and tells you more about what you are trying to find out. but what if you're always wrong, say you spend your whole life trying to find an answer but never come close to finding it. say its something you're extraordinarily passionate about. How do you cope with not having achieved success? I find that a lack of achievement, for myself, in any particular area that i invest much time in leaves me with the worst feelings, which I'm quite sure is normal. Is it that scientists whose theories never reward them have such different personalities that they're able to cope with a lack of success? Or perhaps that some scientists actually do become disheartened?
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I don't imagine anyone would enjoy devoting an entire lifetime trying to answer a particular question and coming up short in the end, but that happens quite a bit. Usually, though, throughout the career of a scientist progress is made in areas other than in his dream, and indeed pretty much as to if he wants to keep doing research (publish or die). Sometimes one career is derailed and another started. I can't think of his name, but one correspondent with Einstein wanted to publish a paper about additional fifth spatial dimension, but Einstein wouldn't sign off on it for a few years. Eventually he did agree to present the paper, but by that time the other fellow had abandoned physics to take up a pure mathematics career instead. Ironically, of course, we now see string theory discussing 10 or more dimensions, so too bad for that fellow.
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Much worse than that, though, is notoriously publishing demonstrably wrong results--that is a real career wrecker. I'm not referring to an honest mistake in some calculation, but publishing a real bonor is fatal. The most infamous example of this in modern science was of course the cold fusion claims by two University of Utah researchers Fleischmann and Pons. Such a sensational claim of course generated big headlines and made the two famous, but when their science was found to be sloppy and the results couldn't be replicated, disaster ensued.
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So yes, scientists fear being incorrect for such reasons as these, but being corrected when mistakes are found in the progress of research is part of the scientific process.
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Being incorrect is not the same as lack of achievement - especially in science. You are right in that an incorrect answer narrows down the focus, and can lead scientists in a new direction. It can be a very frustrating process, but I have found that when my experiments give me results I did not expect, those results are usually the most interesting. Most science classrooms teach us that experiments work most of the time - this is incredibly false. I would estimate that less than 5% of the time an experiment could be deemed "successful", especially on the first try. Science IS trial and error, and that can be seen as being incorrect, but I like to view it as an exciting challenge. Doing an experiment and having results that are unexpected is more progress than never trying at all! :)
Hopefully this gives you some insight and was useful.
No. If you're a scientist you should go into your career expecting to make many mistakes. Every scientist will make a mistake and we learn from it. The difference between a good and bad scientist is that a good scientist learns from those mistakes and is resilient to the strike to his ego that he experiences while a bad scientist takes it personal. It is doubtful that a scientist is going to make a lot of mistakes unless they are on the road to a breakthrough or paradigm shifting discovery. Those take time and effort and a creative mind along with perseverance. It takes a special type of person to do those kinds of tasks in the field of science.
If you wan to get into the personality traits of a good scientist in terms of the Big Five structure of personality they would be low in need for stability (resilience), high in originality (creative), maybe both a challenger and an adapter (so a balanced score on accommodation), low in extraversion, and it probably doesn't matter whether or not they are organized or disorganized (some people can work better in messier environments or don't need order).
Unless a scientist is pursuing something that is scientifically untenable, or the theory being tested is unreasonable (that is it has little chance of being proven), then you could say it may be a waste of time. But in almost all cases, something is learned ... and that's what science is about.
Success is relative ... no matter what you're doing.
Each scientist has a choice on what to focus their attention on. If someone focuses on something that doesn't produce results, for a long time, well ... that's science (though you could argue that scientist isn't clever enough to construct the right experiment).
Interesting, thoughtful answers. Another perspective comes to mind, that was portrayed pretty well in Arthur Koestler's rather obscure book, "The Case of the Midwife Toad". It's a true story about a biologist studying evolutionary theories and how one particular scientist crucified him because it didn't "fit" with conventional thought. Basically scientific politics - doing battle for the sake of ego and reputation, not science. Not a great book, but interesting - you might at least take a look. There's lots of sides to every story. Or question. In my experience it's not a prevalent attitude in today's world, I will say.
I've known a lot of scientists, and some fear being thought "incorrect" more than others.
I've known a few who were terrified to publish numbers that had a statistical significance of about 3 sigma, because they were afraid of the 1% chance that the number might be "wrong".
There are others who put out what might best be described as "highly imaginative" theories, lots of them, one after the other.
You realize that nothing about reality is "certain". Our theories have context, and data has errors. The discussion of how things might be "wrong" and the error analysis of data are a big part of any scientific result.
Fear being incorrect? Certainly, though we shouldn't. Being incorrect is simply a fact of life because nobody is perfect. What you describe are frequent parts of life, which we all learn how to deal with in different ways.
Being incorrect shouldn't be thought of as failing! *Every* person that was great at something did something, played something, performed something, incorrectly. Every musician or athlete that ever lives knows this, as does every student, academic, scientist, etc.
Failures are important events that should be reported. Just as you suggested, we can still learn from them.
There are even repositories like Figshare that get many researchers publishing negative results.
http://figshare.com/features
Naturally, scientists would prefer to be correct, as science is just the correct representation of fact. One of the parts of science which requires the most ingenuity is designing experiments to test what seems untestable. Whether they are disheartened probably depends on the field of science in question, for example most say that it is impossible to fully prove string theory, and yet many scientists still work on it, and likely aren't disheartened.
Of course, no one likes to be wrong. But, for scientists, it's not about being right or wrong; it's about knowing more about something today than you did yesterday. Finding out you were wrong when you learn more about something is *not* "lack of achievement"; the learning more *is* the achievement.
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No, evidence that contradicts the current theories are exciting as they require the theories be revised or replaced. Being proven wrong is often better for a scientist than being proven right as it means the observations are presenting new information.