A recent article on the BBC's Point Of View by Tom Shakespeare (Fly, Fish, Mouse and Worm) caught my attention. The article discusses the "specialisation" of science, for example only studying a single species or a single gene, compared to the broader approach our predecessors took. Tom argues "synthesisers" are now needed, people who can bring together information from different disciplines or different areas within a single discipline in order to combat larger global problems, such as rapid species loss.
Specialisation is prevalent within the academic community, but it has both advantages and limitations to science. Most academic subjects are decades to centuries old, with a large knowledge base and many papers and books published on each area. As time passes, more knowledge is gained and the science advances. However, the amount of knowledge required to know a subject in depth also increases. To prevent an information overload, therefore, researchers specialise into one area.
With the dawn of the internet, speed of communication and dispersal of ideas have also increased, with more papers published in all subject areas. Specialisation allows researchers to stay in touch with current understanding, models or experimental methods. It also reduces competition and direct overlap between researchers as work becomes unpublishable if another person has already published the same results using the same method. If each lab uses a slightly different technique, this allows corroboration of results by another lab, whilst remaining publishable.
Single genes or species are often studied to gain a better understanding of a single variable; the results gained through the specilised study are then extrapolated to the form a bigger picture and further our understanding of a very complex system. By studying a single variable that complexity can be reduced to a manageable set of controlling factors which can then be investigated. The limitation, however, is that scientists are never certain how far the extrapolation can go before the conclusions become incorrect, with possible unaccounted-for variables coming into play.
On one hand specilisation can make science manageable, but it can also be overly limiting. By restricting reading to within their direct field of research, academics can be unaware of advances and techniques in another area which may be beneficial. Communication between different academic subjects can also be impaired by different methodologies, names and acronyms, whilst researchers within a subject may develop a misconstrued idea that their own research area is the most important. Specialised grant bodies who only award money to researchers directly working in specific fields can also limit scientific advancement by only awarding funding to "fashionable" subjects. This can result in the clumping of scientists around one small area of a subject and the bottle-necking of ideas, whilst other areas are neglected due to lack of funds.
Teaching and outreach, communicating the science to members of the public, can also be adversely affected by specialisation because a general overview and good background knowledge are required to explain the subject and answer questions. Those researchers who are too specialised either find this a daunting task, as they try to explain topics not studied since undergraduates, or they do not effectively communicate the information because they fail to provide context and impart a wider understanding.
Many of the greatest problems currently facing the world require collaboration between disciplines, such as flooding, world hunger, species loss and climate change. Tom, in his article, argues this is where "synthesisers" need to come in. I tend to agree that people who can bridge the gap between disciplines may be a good thing, but I also think all researchers need to be encouraged to look beyond their field of study and to build new collaborations between departments. I believe academia is moving down this route, slowly, with a greater push from young researchers for more outreach and open access journals, both of which increase the flow of knowledge and allow access to a wider audience with a wider range of ideas. I wonder if specialisation may be where some of the resistance to these movements originates, with academics afraid either of appearing to not know enough, or from the idea that someone may steal their niche. Change is afoot but, as with any ingrained doctrine which has developed over many years, change takes a very long time.
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