What makes a great scientist? An intuitive answer probably is: “be an expert in a certain field.” Yet, as modern biomedical science is such a fast-evolving field, will become “the expert” be our ultimate goal?
In the business world, you will hear people often look for talents who are so-called “T-shaped”. They have an uncanny ability to work outside the core area while maintaining the depth of expertise in a given area. Who doesn’t want such talent in science? Counterintuitively, in science training, we are almost afraid of talking of exploring different areas or learn somethings for the neighboring lab. Many scientists, ironically, only work in their comfort zone throughout their career. Non-arguably, they are indeed the experts in their field. One of the biggest “fear” is doing science is such a big undertaking – even one subject matter requires years a of training to be somewhere close to be “an expert”. We don’t want to train our students to be a “Jack of all trades, master of none”. Sound reasonable, right?
From the pure “business execution” perspective, the narrowly focused niche scientist might be way ahead of publication game (at beginning of one’s career), because they can focus on using limited resources to generate immediate research product. However, I often feel those truly ingenious and visionary ones in science are the scientists who have broad interests in other fields. Aristotle’s interest was way beyond the logic. Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific discoveries contributed to many natural science disciplines besides being an artist. Interdisciplinary knowledge make you a better scientist! In retrospective, the recent lead edge trends cancer biology are always inspired by other fields, which made me feel we as cancer biologist are always following other people’s footsteps 🙁 … cancer stem cell theory, cancer evolution, tumor mechanotransduction… just name a few.
Interdisciplinary training is important for future visionary leaders in science. One key question for science educator is how to balance the training in “depth” and the training in “breath”. Novice science explorers are easily getting distracted and lost in the weeds of “other cool science”. Being “focused” means keep saying “NO” (at least at this moment). Yet, there is nothing to be more important to keep an open mind and embrace the interdisciplinary science when the opportunities present themselves to you. In the end, “learning new things” is the fundamental happiness that we all enjoy 🙂