Saturday, December 23, 2017

Collaboration In Science Across Disciplines

By J.J. at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=671715

A statement in favor of cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is here (abstract below).  Based on my own experiences, and anecdotal evidence collaboration across disciplines may be easier than within a discipline, because of the competition and personal hostilities that exist between scientists within a discipline.  On the other hand, cross-disciplinary collaboration requires open-mindedness, a trait that many scientists these days surprisingly do not have.

"Science" is under increasing amounts of scrutiny. Concerns about reproducibility, reduced institutional support, and intensified competition has been highlighted in recent years, but segregated science endangers scientific discovery above all. Segregated science can be interdisciplinary (biology vs psychology) or interdisciplinary (behaviorism vs cognitive psychology). The advancement of science and public knowledge depends on the unification of all disciplines to better understand the phenomena scientists study. We suggest that engendering collaborations across scientific disciplines produces better-designed research and appropriate interpretations, and increases career-long success. I am not a cognitive psychologist, behaviorist, or biologist because I am a neuroscientist.

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