Bridging Across Methods and Models in the Biosciences
Podcast Series
Why this podcast series?
The short answer is that if science is to stand any chance of being useful for the many challenges facing the world today, scientists cannot be doing their work in silos. They need to be connected with other scientists, and with implementers in industry, in public interest groups, in policy, and in governance. Major ‘grand challenges’ like climate change, pandemic preparedness, dealing with major health concerns are multi-faceted problems, and can’t be addressed using traditional ‘one discipline at a time’ approaches. Innovation that is able to bring together science and new applications in creative and efficient ways needs people who are able to think outside of their silos, academics able to hook up with design, manufacturing, technology and policy. National research policies recognise this, and increasingly ask for crossdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity — that is, the ability to put traditional disciplinary, institutional, and organisational boundaries to the side, and to work towards in a transformational way. . A good example is the Missions approach adopted by the latest framework for European funding, which makes it a priority to ‘link activities across disciplines and different types of research and innovation’.
In line with this increasing focus on connecting between disciplines and sectors, in June 2021, we organised the conference ‘Methods and Models in Biomedical Research: Building Bridges’. A collaboration between the Champalimaud Foundation, the JRC Systems Toxicology Unit, and FRESCI, the workshop created an opportunity for discussions across diverse communities in biomedical sciences (agency, regulatory, industry, researchers), an opportunity to talk freely about methods and models, and explore common ground. This series of podcasts extends the conversations started at that workshop, and continued at a FELASA workshop, also aiming to show how multidisciplinary approaches can spearhead innovation.
At all these events, we focused on what people in research actually do when they bridge across methods or areas, or when they cross boundaries. Rather than becoming bogged down in the definitions of different kinds of cross-disciplinarity (multi-, inter-, trans-), we tried to elicit experiences and examples of scientists doing things differently because of their exchange with others from different backgrounds and perspectives. More than the abstract concept of ‘discipline’, we were interested in the methods and models that researchers use in answering research questions: why do some bioscientists spend their whole careers on in vivo approaches, while others’ careers become defined by in vitro approaches? Why do others mix and match?
Genuine exchange across the compartments into which science is organised (disciplines, departments, institutions, sectors) is very rare. Following on the workshops we held, we wanted to hear the voices of people who have direct experience of trying to bridge between ways of doing things, of crossing boundaries. Without judging whether their experience is successful or not, we want to hear what those experiences are. The people we hear from are scientists, researchers, and those who rely on science to help them to innovate, or to form policy. They are at different levels of their career, from junior to senior, from early- to post-career. They are all dedicated to producing the best science, and to acting on it effectively.
We talk to them about their daily practices of doing what they do. The lab work, the experimental design, the formulation of research questions, the aims and goals, the conversations, the meetings. How do they collaborate, what are the things that helped them to get productive cross-disciplinarity working, and those that did not. We aim to explore together how these practices work to interconnect different perspectives and integrate different approaches and methods -- or don’t.
In these podcasts, Annamaria Carusi, philosopher of science and technology and expert in the science of science, enters into conversation with scientists with first hand experience in crossing boundaries, between methods, disciplines, sectors.