374 CATALYZING INQUIRY
small-animal imaging facility, and the Biofilms center. Other core shared facilities available to the
Stanford research community include a bioinformatics facility, a magnetic resonance facility, a
microarray facility, a transgenic animal facility, a cell sciences imaging facility, a product realization lab,
the Stanford Center for innovation in in vivo imaging, a tissue bank, and facilities for cognitive neuro-
science, mass spectrometry, electron microscopy, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting.^77
Interdisciplinary projects are often bigger than unidisciplinary projects, and bigger projects increase
coordination costs. Coordination costs are reflected in delays in project schedules, poor monitoring of
progress, and an uneven distribution of information and awareness of what others in the project are
doing. Coordination costs also reduce people’s willingness to tolerate logistical problems that might be
more tolerable in their home contexts. Furthermore, they increase the difficulty of developing mutual
regard and common ground, and they lead to more misunderstandings.^78
Coordination costs can be addressed in part through changes in technology, management, funding,
and physical resources. But they can never be reduced to zero, and learning to live with greater over-
head in conducting interdisciplinary work is a sine qua non for participants.
10.3.3.4 Risks of Retraining and Conversion
Retraining or conversion efforts almost always entail reduced productivity for some period of time.
This fact is often viewed with dread by individuals who have developed good reputations in their
original fields, and who may worry about sacrificing a promising career in their home field while
entering at a disadvantage in the new one. These concerns are especially pronounced when they involve
individuals in midcareer rather than recently out of graduate school.
Such fears often underlie the failure of individuals seeking to retool themselves to commit them-
selves fully to their new work. That is, they seek to maintain some degree of ties to their original fields—
some research, some keeping up with the literature, some publishing in familiar journals, some going to
familiar conferences, and so on. These efforts drain time and energy from the retraining process, but
more importantly they may inhibit the necessary mind-set of success and commitment in the new
domain of work. (On the other hand, keeping a foot in their old fields could also be viewed as a rational
hedge against the possibility that conversion may not be successful in leading to a new field of special-
ization. Moreover, maintaining the discipline of continual output is a task that requires constant prac-
tice, and one’s old field is likely to be the best source of such output.)
10.3.3.5 Rapid But Uneven Changes in Biology
Biology is an enormously broad field that contains dozens of subfields. Over the past few decades,
these subfields have not all advanced or prospered equally. For example, molecular and cell biology
have received the lion’s share of biological funding and prestige, while subfields such as animal behav-
ior or ecology have faired much less well. Molecular and cell biology (and more recently genomics,
proteomics, and neuroscience) have swept through as departments modernize, in a kind of “band-
wagon” effect, leaving some of the more traditional subfields to lie fallow because promising young
scholars in those subfields are unable to find permanent jobs or establish their careers due to these
shifts.
Moreover, prospering subfields are highly correlated with the use of information technology. Such
a close association of IT with prospering fields is likely to exacerbate lingering resentments from non-
prospering subfields toward the use of information technology.
(^77) For more information see http://biox.stanford.edu/.
(^78) J. Cummings and S. Kiesler, “Collaborative Research Across Disciplinary and Institutional Boundaries,” Social Studies of
Science, in press, available at http://hciresearch.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/complexcollab/pubs/paperPDFs/cummings_collaborative.pdf.