Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-14
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Within broad fields, such as mental health research, the need to understand the entire human organism, not just one part of it, is driving disciplines toward each other as scientists seek better ways to prevent, diagnose, treat, and control such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorders, and learning disabilities. Solutions to existing and future health problems will likely require drawing on a variety of disciplines and on approaches in which interdisciplinary efforts characterize not only the cutting edge of research,
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Because input from nine NIH institute directors indicated full agreement with the premise, the committee focused on how, rather than if, interdisciplinary research and training should be pursued. The committee broadly interpreted its charge as a request to provide guidance on how to bring together scientists from different fields to explore new frontiers and to train new scientists so they would be prepared to interact with multiple disciplines.
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Interdisciplinary approaches often build on single disciplinary discoveries. Disciplines evolve from interdisciplinary efforts as exemplified by neuroscience.
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Funding of Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers brought together clinical and basic scientists from multiple disciplines and produced striking progress in the development of promising interventions. A great many interdisciplinary programs currently exist.
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To encourage clinicians to engage in research, NIH's loan repayment programs can repay educational loans up to $35,000 per year for eligible researchers employed at NIH. Extending these debt repayment programs could provide an increased incentive to pursue interdisciplinary research training.
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Institutional training grants (for example, the T32 National Research Service Award from NIH, the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program from NSF, and some support mechanisms from private foundations) provide coordinated training activities for a cohort of students.
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of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, can be effective in producing clinical researchers. To support nonphysician clinicians as contributors to translational research, NIH offers training programs for dentists and nurses that are similar to those tailored to MDs.
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Grant Foundation Faculty Scholars Program, which strongly encourage interdisciplinary efforts that otherwise might not be funded by traditional sources. The MacArthur Fellows Program uses an alternative approach, investing in the individual rather than a particular project and allowing the fellows to work in multiple disciplines, to train in a new field, or to change direction in their careers.
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EVALUATION HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH PROGRAMS WORK TO ENCOURAGE INTERDISCIPLINARY EFFORTS? Despite decades of discussion about interdisciplinary needs, data to support the requirement for and effectiveness of the available mechanisms are scanty.
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Funding agencies might alter the peer review system, improve profiles for funding of interdisciplinary proposals, or introduce new mechanisms to support interdisciplinary efforts. Devising an approach to track and evaluate interdisciplinary training and research programs will be extraordinarily challenging and should be the subject of extensive analysis by people with appropriate expertise.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 13 The committee encourages interdisciplinary training and research, not from a philosophic belief in "interdisciplinarity," but from the knowledge that many scientific problems are refractory to solution by the methods of a single discipline and require the incorporation of concepts and methods from several disciplines simultaneously. Interdisciplinary research is flourishing in our institutions despite the barriers.
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