Today my collaborators and I found a mistake in my analysis (the result of an unnoticed R package error and a corrupt data file) that could have changed some preliminary results collaborators had already reported ()

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I felt HORRIBLE, and immediately spent time fixing it (and running the analysis a million times to make sure it was correct and consistent).

The results ended up being almost exactly what we thought they were, but the scare and the mistake were real.

I just want to hide the fact that I made a mistake and no one noticed it until now (after some results were shared with others and right before submission)

I'm so embarrassed but I thought that sharing it here might make other people feel better about making mistakes

I learned from this situation (the R package error is apparently a known issue), and tightened up my future workflow to prevent this from happening.

But I am trying to sit with the failure and make it right, while not beating myself up as much.

Thank you SO much for your kind words, and support. It did help a little to admit to making mistakes publicly

I'm muting this thread for a bit, but I hope others feel like it's okay to admit making mistakes (even ones that make you feel dumb, like this one did).

I've certainly learned how to be more careful from this mistake and that's all you can do once you make a mistake: learn!