Sullivan, Jacqueline (2026) The Pursuitworthiness of Team Science Collaborations in Translational Neuroscience. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Neuroscientists investigating the neural bases of cognition in health and disease increasingly face choices about how to structure their programs of research. On the one hand, they can pursue independent investigator-led disciplinary specific research projects and seek funding through traditional granting mechanisms. On the other, they can experiment with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations of varying scale and scope, applying for funding for multi-year milestone driven projects. Although team-based initiatives have become a prominent feature of the neuroscientific research landscape in recent years, relatively little is known about how scientists evaluate whether participation in them is worth pursuing. In this paper, I present findings from semi-structured interviews with 10 neuroscientists participating in the Translational Research Initiative to De-Risk NeuroTherapeutics (TRIDENT) that bear on this question. Drawing on Laudan’s distinction between the contexts of acceptance and pursuit and conceptual tools from decision theory to frame the empirical findings, I argue that scientists’ assessments of the pursuitworthiness of interdisciplinary collaboration are shaped not only by expectations about potential epistemic benefits but also by forms of experiential knowledge acquired through prior collaborative experiences. Three key themes emerge from the interviews. First, scientists explore team-based approaches to achieve epistemic benefits they do not regard as attainable through independent investigator-led disciplinary research. Second, positive and negative experiences arising from these explorations generate experiential knowledge about collaborators and collaborations. Third, scientists subsequently exploit this experiential knowledge, which over time becomes incorporated into tacit practical guides that inform their judgments about whether to pursue future collaborations.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | pursuitworthiness, team science, interdisciplinary collaboration, translational neuroscience, tacit heuristics, decision-making in science, philosophy of neuroscience | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Molecular Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Medicine > Psychiatry |
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| Depositing User: | Jacqueline Sullivan | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 19 Mar 2026 11:16 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 19 Mar 2026 11:16 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 28671 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Molecular Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Medicine > Psychiatry |
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| Date: | 15 March 2026 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/28671 |
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