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Interdisciplinary promises versus practices in medicine: The decoupled experiences of social sciences and humanities scholars

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  • Albert, Mathieu
  • Paradis, Elise
  • Kuper, Ayelet

Abstract

This paper explores social scientists' and humanities (SSH) scholars' integration within the academic medical research environment. Three questions guided our investigation: Do SSH scholars adapt to the medical research environment? How do they navigate their career within a culture that may be inconsistent with their own? What strategies do they use to gain legitimacy? The study builds on three concepts: decoupling, doxa, and epistemic habitus. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with SSH scholars working in 11 faculties of medicine across Canada. Participants were selected through purposeful and snowball sampling. The data were analyzed by thematic content analysis. For most of our participants, moving into medicine has been a challenging experience, as their research practices and views of academic excellence collided with those of medicine. In order to achieve some level of legitimacy more than half of our participants altered their research practices. This resulted in a dissonance between their internalized appreciation of academic excellence and their new, altered, research practices. Only six participants experienced no form of challenge or dissonance after moving into medicine, while three decided to break with their social science and humanities past and make the medical research community their new home. We conclude that the work environment for SSH scholars in faculties of medicine does not deliver on the promise of inclusiveness made by calls for interdisciplinarity in Canadian health research.

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  • Albert, Mathieu & Paradis, Elise & Kuper, Ayelet, 2015. "Interdisciplinary promises versus practices in medicine: The decoupled experiences of social sciences and humanities scholars," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 17-25.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:126:y:2015:i:c:p:17-25
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Rosenfield, Patricia L., 1992. "The potential of transdisciplinary research for sustaining and extending linkages between the health and social sciences," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 1343-1357, December.
    2. Albert, Mathieu & Laberge, Suzanne & Hodges, Brian D. & Regehr, Glenn & Lingard, Lorelei, 2008. "Biomedical scientists' perception of the social sciences in health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(12), pages 2520-2531, June.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Jan Činčera & Grzegorz Mikusiński & Bohuslav Binka & Luis Calafate & Cristina Calheiros & Alexandra Cardoso & Marcus Hedblom & Michael Jones & Alex Koutsouris & Clara Vasconcelos & Katarzyna Iwińska, 2019. "Managing Diversity: The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-16, October.
    3. Albert, Mathieu & Laberge, Suzanne, 2017. "Confined to a tokenistic status: Social scientists in leadership roles in a national health research funding agency," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 137-146.
    4. Greenhalgh, Trisha & Engebretsen, Eivind, 2022. "The science-policy relationship in times of crisis: An urgent call for a pragmatist turn," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).

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