HIV/AIDS

Metamorphosing from solitary lives to social hives - A Team Approach to Science

In biomedical research the low hanging fruits are long harvested, and the complex, daunting questions remaining requires interdisciplinary teams not lone-scientists. To succeed, researchers must forge partnerships with scientists in other fields.

In collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and American Psychological Association, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) organized a conference titled “The Science of Team Science – Assessing the value of transdisciplinary research” on October 30-31, 2006, drawing together scientists who work in large cross-disciplinary scientific teams and program officers ,who administer these projects, and social scientists and medical historians to evaluate if the team approach is really working. The conference aimed to review the past history, processes, and outcomes of cross-disciplinary team science and training programs; identify methods and metrics currently available for evaluating transdisciplinary collaboration and large initiatives; identify priorities for future research; and opportunities to implement these findings in ways that will improve future initiatives.

Critics of team science argue that scientific and societal values of team initiatives relative to small scale research projects (R01s) are overstated. They contend that team science draws investigators into million-dollar collaborative centers who otherwise would be more productive working independently or as co-investigators on smaller scale projects. But proponents assert that ameliorating some of the public health problems necessitates that researchers join forces to create solutions. However, team science does not mean “big science” and cannot be applied to every problem; rather team science focuses selective and strategic attention on a specific question leading to “smarter science.”

The stages of transition from research in one single area to encompassing multiple areas are multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. Social scientist Dr. Patricia Rosenfield at the Carnegie Corp. in 1992 defined the terms as follows:

• Multidisciplinary (MD) -- researchers from different fields work in parallel or sequentially, each from their specific area of expertise, to address a common problem
• Interdisciplinary (ID) -- researchers work jointly, but anchored from each of their respective disciplinary perspectives, to address a common problem
• Transdisciplinary (TD) -- researchers work jointly by breaking down the borders of their specific specialties and integrating discipline-specific theories, concepts, and approaches to synthesize a hybrid field to address a common problem

This conference focused on TD research. While NIH has traditionally been good at narrow, deep strategic planning within the mission of each institute, it has been less successful in stimulating projects that cut across the boundaries of many institutes. In 1999, NIH launched the first TD project, Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURC) initiative, jointly funded by NCI, National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The grants permit centers to study new ways of battling tobacco addiction and use, and translate the knowledge gained for shaping interventions, advocacy, and policy. Midway through TTRUC initiative, NCI started Evaluation of Large Initiatives (ELI) to develop “yard-sticks” and methods for measuring the benefits accruing from substantial investment in this initiative. ELI aims to determine how the processes of collaborating, training, and integrating intellectual knowledge and insight --immediate performance indicators of collaboration-- were playing out and how these initial markers related temporally to subsequent intermediate markers of collaboration, and how further down the line they impacted policy, outcomes, translated into practice.

Now many TD support mechanisms have emerged, one of them being the “Training for a New Interdisciplinary Research Workforce” funded by the NIH Roadmap. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have produced good literature on how to manage TD work. The challenges of TD science dictates long-term funding, perseverance in the face of obstacles, patience as gains will not be realized for many years, and trial and errors as integral components of the process.

The key elements that that facilitate or impede transdisciplinary research include:

1. Collaborative readiness levels are determined by:
• Leadership is a critical factor in the success of TD science. Collaborative orientation, ability to manage large projects, team-building, and conflict management skills along with expert knowledge in the leader are critical to the success of the venture.
• Team members’ history of collaboration on prior projects also bears upon the success of the undertaking. Social organization of the team has tremendous impact on the intellectual integration of the team.
• Commitment of members to the collaboration, and recognition of contextual differences and needs of different teams.
• Distance between investigators’ offices and laboratories, and in absence of face-to-face interaction, electronic connectivity or cyber infrastructure to support scientific collaboration as initiatives are often dispersed across many different geographical sites and organizational venues.
• Diversity of scientific views can create stimulus of creativity, but sometimes clashing views can delay integration.
• Departmental identities of the team members –consolidated or spread apart.
• Institutional support in the form of financial incentives, start-up package, core infrastructure (space, resources, and administrative support), changes in traditional promotion, and tenure criteria as contribution of junior scientists to TD science can be undervalued due to team nature of publications.
• Agreement on intellectual property, legal and co-authorship rules early on when the stakes are lower.
2. Sustainable alliances have to be forged to translate team science into effective clinical practice, community health, and policy innovations to improve health outcomes. Institutional support fosters sustainability, and the highest level of leadership must be committed to the process.
3. Prior to initiation of the project, considerable time must be spent in planning and organizing the collaboration, common work practices and terminology have to be developed once work has begun, periodic reviews must be conducted, and improvements must be based on the reviews. Although structure is important, these programs need to be flexible too.
4. Training components must be incorporated in the form of pre-doctoral or post-doctoral research to create “incubator spaces” that foster competency in multiple areas of specialization.
5. Team teaching experience helps create bonding among the faculty. Off-site retreats can defuse TD tension and promote intellectual integration and build trust among team members.
6. Quality, scope, and utility of the large-scale initiatives need to be evaluated. Metrics for evaluation need to be developed. Opinions of not only participants but also appraisals by outside consultants and reviewers should be gathered through surveys. Social network analysis can be used to assess levels of interaction.
7. NIH, the major funding agency relies on study groups to review applications, and these groups often have problems digesting TD applications and difficulty thinking “out-of-the-box.” So, reviewers need to be educated.

Implications for HIV Vaccine Research

Vaccine research, particularly the development of HIV vaccines, is a topical area for TD research. Designing an effective HIV vaccine will require diverse groups of scientists such as immunologists, vaccinologists, virologists, and epidemiologists to combine their expertise and create a more unified research environment to explore the biology behind HIV prevention. While unifying disciplines is not an easy task but TD research is the next critical step in breeding the next generation of discovery and development in HIV vaccine.

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