Rockets are not good metaphors for research success

All the excitement about the Artemis mission and the human endeavour that it embodies reminded me of a research leadership course I recently took in which rockets were depicted as a good metaphor for success.

I was required to attend the course in preparation for my new role as principal investigator. Over several workshops, my fellow awardees and I were presented with what we were told was state-of-the-art thinking on research leadership. Interestingly, this was taught not by experienced academics, but by management consultants from outside the sector.

Of all the models we encountered, the “rocket model” stood out.

We were asked to think of our research group as a rocket ship. The PI sits in the front, steering towards the stars. Below, in the engine room, postdocs and PhD students provide the thrust. This model was presented as appropriate for “highly ambitious groups with a clear destination”. What went undiscussed was the uncomfortable truth embedded in the metaphor: in a rocket, only the front module ever reaches the destination. Everything else is jettisoned after its fuel has run out.

In many ways, this metaphor is honest about how academia can be. The achievements of collaborative work are often attributed to single, often senior, scholars. But this represents our profession at its worst. It suggests that ambitious research leaders are those who design groups centred on propelling themselves into the scientific firmament.

Instead, I prefer to think of academic leadership in terms of a more down-to-earth metaphor that centres around trees. In this metaphor, I distinguish between two types of research leader: those who grow as single, enormous trees, and those who cultivate growth around them.

Some trees grow very tall by virtue of monopolising the resources around them, making it impossible for anything else to flourish due to the lack of light, water or space. These towering oaks are successful in winning grants, prolific in publishing and magnetic in attracting talented staff. From a distance, they look like the perfect academics. But when you get up close, you see that beneath them, everything is stunted and bare. Postdocs remain postdocs. PhD students drift away from research entirely. Yet the tree just keeps growing taller because our systems of recognition do not sufficiently assess contributions to the wider research environment.

But then there is the other kind of research leader: the person who nurtures, rather than suffocates, sometimes even slowing their own growth. These are the people who give away ideas generously, dropping intellectual seeds wherever they go. They advocate loudly for their junior colleagues, helping PhD students to secure first-author papers and postdocs to secure independent positions. They share grant income and research credit in ways that truly reflect collaborative work.

When looking at conventional metrics, such academics may look like underperformers. Their h-indices may be lower. Their grant income may seem modest. But in reality, they are achieving something far more valuable: they are growing forests. And a forest will always amount to more than any individual tree, regardless of how tall it is.

The forest analogy is about building research fields that outlast single careers. It is about creating intellectual communities that can tackle the problems that matter. It is about developing the next generation of researchers – who will, in turn, grow forests of their own. This kind of shared, lasting impact is what we should cultivate and reward in academia.

I am not arguing that ambition is wrong, or that success is suspicious. But we need to be honest about how success is shared in academia, because too often it isn’t. The rocket model tells us that junior researchers are means to an end, that their role is to fuel the principal investigator towards glory and then disappear. It normalises exploitation.

The forest metaphor offers something different. It suggests that leadership is not just about individually reaching for the stars but about creating conditions for growth. It confronts us with a question that all research leaders should ask themselves frequently: how am I benefiting those around me?

It is tempting for new PIs like me to dismiss this question by focusing on imitating the exploitative practices of others. I still have limited lived experience of the dilemmas of running a group. When I’m attributed credit for shared work simply because I’m the named grant holder, will I simply accept that without pushback? Chances are that no one will hold me to account if I do. And in the absence of a system that holds us accountable for the growth we create (or suppress), it is easy to tell ourselves that the group’s survival depends on lifting our own names into the light.

Better metaphors alone do not change the system, but they offer a start – not to flatter our egos by calling ourselves forest-growers instead of rockets, but by helping us notice when we are casting shadows we cannot see.