Nearly all management speeches within academia champion interdisciplinary research. They talk about the importance of dismantling “silos” and getting people to work together.
Closer to the coalface you’ll hear the same thing from some of the workers. But you won’t hear it from all the scientists; many scientists do work in silos and simply ignore the requests to work with others.
Why is this and should we do something about it?
Many scientists actually like silos. This is not because scientists are anti-social introverts – in reality, very few are. It is because deep, disciplinary-specific knowledge and a critical mass of like-minded researchers are sometimes absolutely essential to tackling sophisticated problems.
Silos can be very effective. While cooperation creates synergies, particularly in creative domains in both science and arts, individual freedom can be just as important. Forming a committee doesn’t make for better poems and big teams don’t always ask better scientific questions.
What about the big problems?
But aren’t we told that the big problems of today – energy, health, the environment – require interdisciplinary teams? It is true that implementing remedies requires teams, but investigating the scientific basis of the problem is often done best by a range of highly specialised staff working in depth on well-defined questions in one discipline.
Specialisation and compartmentalisation are critical to excellence. The human body is organised into specialised organs for a reason, and it could not operate if everything were blended into an interdisciplinary soup.
Relatively few political leaders and high-level managers talk about this aspect of how science works.
On top of this, most scientists are trained to be independent, to focus and to be persistent. If you stick with any good problem and dig deep enough, you will eventually find something interesting. It is like digging a well: you have to keep going, don’t get distracted, don’t go sideways.
The biggest trap for a young scientist is to jump on the back of tempting new bandwagons. Jumping onto other people’s bandwagons virtually guarantees that you will never be the first to discover anything new. Instead, at best you’ll be second.
One good metaphor involves dogs and cats. Both hunt feral pigeons. Dogs run in packs after them in the park and each time one lands, they chase it. They never catch pigeons. Cats on the other hand sit behind a tree in the garden and wait – and they are deadly.
So we need to acknowledge and even celebrate dedicated silos. We should congratulate those who make it to the top of their disciplines.
How to support new interdisciplinary research
Next we should encourage top researchers to look out across the intellectual landscape and make connections to deep thinkers on the top of other silos. We should build bridges rather than try to break down silos.
There are two simple ways to build bridges. The first is via shared technologies. Top researchers need sophisticated infrastructure and they share it readily.
The Australian Research Council’s Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment Facility (LIEF) grants are important, and the Howard government introduced the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). This was a visionary step.