Community, disciplines and language

A post by a colleague at the IRI raises some very interesting points about the role of disciplines, language/jargon and communities in the public health context. A few excerpts:

"As a physician, epidemiologist and lately, as climate-health researcher working within this framework, I have been faced with two interesting challenges. The first is language, not only the difficulty of working outside Spanish, my mother tongue, but the exclusive coded languages developed and used by disciplines (concepts, technical terms, and equations), which often have the potential to confuse outsiders. Concepts have different meanings for different disciplines...Interdisciplinary researchers must overcome these barriers in order to develop and work in a common language.
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A second basic challenge is related to the sociology of science. Often, to grow within their chosen discipline, scientists must follow a set of unwritten rules that govern their discipline. This leads to the view that interdisciplinary research is “soft science” and doesn’t count because it does not match to disciplinary traditions or is published in less important journals."

You can view the entire post here.