WIKIMEDIA, SVILEN.MILEVBreaking down traditional disciplinary boundaries to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas is heralded as a key strategy for solving complex problems in science and society. But a study published today (June 29) in Nature reveals that this philosophical ideal outshines the associated financial reward.
“It’s the first study that, in a rigorous way, confirms a suspicion . . . that more interdisciplinary research proposals have a harder time getting funded,” said systems biologist Luís Amaral of Northwestern University in Chicago who was not involved in the research.
“There’s been a strong push—not just in the sciences, but in general—to start making your research relevant, and one way to do that is to have your research be interdisciplinary . . . to take a systems-type perspective,” said ecologist Matthew Helmus of Temple University in Philadelphia who also did not participate in the study. The idea, he continued, is that “when you do this cross-disciplinary research, you should be able to solve a lot of the world’s problems.”
But there is ...
