Classrooms lionize scientific greats like Albert Einstein—but the extent to which they do so may be harmful for today’s students.

A new study suggests that students who learn about famous scientists’ struggles will perform significantly better in their science classes than students who are just given a laundry list of the same scientists’ intellectual accomplishments.

The researchers studied a group of 400 freshmen and sophomores from the Bronx and Harlem. Some of the students read about scientists’ accomplishments, as they might read in a traditional textbook—while two other groups of students read about celebrated scientists’ personal struggles and professional hurdles, respectively. Here’s Melissa Dahl, writing for Science of Us: