I once sat in on a hiring committee where candidates with broad, interdisciplinary CVs were treated with subtle derision—as though curiosity across domains was a sign of unseriousness.
As someone who’s always been promiscuous with my curiosity, I was surprised—and disappointed.
That experience stuck with me. It challenged my once-naive belief that academia was a place that welcomed intellectual breadth.
So you can imagine my quiet hope when I saw Nature publish this: an editorial calling for an end to the "pivot penalty"—the career cost researchers pay when they step outside their disciplinary silos.
The piece notes that interdisciplinary teams often produce more meaningful work (even if it takes longer) and that global problems demand cross-domain insight. It also highlights studies showing that Nobel laureates are more likely to collaborate across fields, and calls for evaluation systems to catch up.
Maybe—just maybe—we’re starting to value the spark that comes from recombining ideas that don’t obviously belong together.
And maybe that means a few more of us can return to the kind of scholarly life we once imagined.
rob_c · 2h ago
Much less that and I think this is transitionally and normally is trying to drag (attract) people from scientifically (statistically minded) harder fields into softer ones to help them fix up methodologies, improve their basic stats and maths and even yes computing skills in their departments.
The real benefit comes from scientists who stop using any form of "black box" and either can build all of the tools they're using our at least understand them.
bell-cot · 2h ago
Whatever the high ideals of academia and science, I've heard far too many stories of academics & scientists behaving in a broad variety of bigoted, narrow-minded, and self-serving ways.
I'll blame human nature. If you lock up little groups in the grueling, narrow, resource-poor environments of academia & research, then they'll react like humans - trying to protect themselves and their little tribes by excluding "outsiders".
rob_c · 2h ago
Then to be blunt, be the change you hope to see in the world.
I work with a few people who do cross disciplinary work (mostly to educate and collaborate with colleagues who are behind in other fields) but this sounds like more of a US phenomena because I'm Europe there's plenty of ways of having such work accounted for, assessed and promoted.
I'm far more worried about the reproducibility crises in a certain hard science than I think I'll ever be about failing to get a promotion on time for taking on a different project.
As someone who’s always been promiscuous with my curiosity, I was surprised—and disappointed.
That experience stuck with me. It challenged my once-naive belief that academia was a place that welcomed intellectual breadth.
So you can imagine my quiet hope when I saw Nature publish this: an editorial calling for an end to the "pivot penalty"—the career cost researchers pay when they step outside their disciplinary silos.
The piece notes that interdisciplinary teams often produce more meaningful work (even if it takes longer) and that global problems demand cross-domain insight. It also highlights studies showing that Nobel laureates are more likely to collaborate across fields, and calls for evaluation systems to catch up.
Maybe—just maybe—we’re starting to value the spark that comes from recombining ideas that don’t obviously belong together.
And maybe that means a few more of us can return to the kind of scholarly life we once imagined.
The real benefit comes from scientists who stop using any form of "black box" and either can build all of the tools they're using our at least understand them.
I'll blame human nature. If you lock up little groups in the grueling, narrow, resource-poor environments of academia & research, then they'll react like humans - trying to protect themselves and their little tribes by excluding "outsiders".
I work with a few people who do cross disciplinary work (mostly to educate and collaborate with colleagues who are behind in other fields) but this sounds like more of a US phenomena because I'm Europe there's plenty of ways of having such work accounted for, assessed and promoted.
I'm far more worried about the reproducibility crises in a certain hard science than I think I'll ever be about failing to get a promotion on time for taking on a different project.