The Female Science Professor turns over the rocks and brings the real clash of cultures into the bright light of reason...
are you blinkered and missing the big picture, or a jack-of-all-trades (but master of none)
I know what I am...
Seriously.
The question of whether to focus narrowly on a single topic, possibly becoming The Expert in it; or, to dabble in a range of sub-topics, possibly related, is a major divisor in many academic fields.
Narrow focus definitely enhances short to medium term productivity and can enhance tenure prospects, since a typical question posed is whether the candidate is an acknowledge expert in "their field". It can also increase funding prospects IF the sub-field is hot. Long term, you take your chances, and being narrow can make it difficult to switch.
Trying to work in multiple sub-fields can be hard, the cumulative learning curve is steeper, it is harder to keep up. In any given field you may be viewed as an outsider who is "really" working in another field, and when it comes to hiring and tenure issues it can be hard to get anyone to acknowledge expertise.
On the other hand it is easier to shift emphasis and sub-fields, funding is more diverse and therefore more robust, even if individual grants may be harder to get.
FSP is right, the choice needs to be up to the individual, come what may career-wise.
Oh, and as in most things, academia is schizoid on the issue - academics should be narrow at certain times and broad at different times in a completely contradictory pattern of expectations.
Nominally universities currently support "interdisciplinarity", though in some cases that is really a code word for other things, like: "channel funding from other field to our unit", or "I get to be boss of even more people than exist in my unit".
But, that is just me being cynical.
Astrophysics is a great disicipline, in that I personally feel it requires continuous application of essentially all of physics, unlike most of physics.
And being "unfocused" is a lot of fun, especially when departments try to find a one sentence description of your research for web sites, or assign people to "research areas".
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This applies not only to scientific field, but methodology as well. In astrophysics, there is often a mentality of "are you an observer or are you a theorist?"
I like being both -- it's much more interesting to me to be doing a range of very different things in my research life. Some days I'm banging away on simulation code, and on other days I'm crawling around inside a telescope tracking down light leaks.
"All code and no photons (or vice versa) makes Jack a dull boy."
(although i still have to put up with people saying "i didn't know you could observe" [or more annoyingly -- "who took the data for you?"] even though I've been an observer for all of my research career....)
oh yes...
no, wait! that's just crazy talk!
you can't observe AND do theory
I'm pretty sure there's a policy against that
To be slightly serious, I have seen grads get their Ph.Ds on observational topics but never go to the telescope. I am not sure how I feel about this.
I liked your last comment about the fun that ensues when a diverse department tries to divide people into different research areas. I really benefitted from that once: the dept. chair had divided everyone up into five groups, and I didn't fit neatly into any of them, so there were six groups: five of them with ~5-6 people per group, and then one group with just me. Then he looked at the chart, and said "Clearly, our most important hiring priority is more people in EarlyToBed's area". Everyone agreed. Now, years later, I am heading a humongous multimillion dollar research program. Wait. I think some of that last part might have been a dream.
I work both sides of that street myself.
In my experience (my subfield is what NASA calls "heliophysics" these days) the best data analysts are the ones that know theory, and the best theorists are the ones that know data. This is at least partly due to the propensity of satellite instruments to do strange things: the data analyst who knows theory learns how to spot and avoid analyzing glitches, while the theorist who knows data can recognize when the interesting data feature is a glitch which does not prove anything pro or con. Unfortunately, we see too many bad theories which are based on bad analysis of bad data; fortunately, better theorists and data analysts soon recognize these cases for what they are.
Steinn - what would be your recommendation to graduate students (such as myself) who are trying to make a decision about which culture fits them best?
I have my own interest in LIGO research, but am rather uninterested in detector work or match filtering. I would like to study how signals from LIGO/LISA can constrain the needed equation of state for Neutron stars and other compact objects.
This though requires in the least a strong knowledge of nuclear physics along with GR. Would I be biting off more than I can handle with this?
Where are you now Stiggy?
Depends.
Is that THE Chris Ford?
You mean the Chris Ford that's the ex-coach of the Boston Celtics?
Nah, he's an impostor.
The real Chris Ford plays cricket, mate.
Matt: which approach suits you is something you have to figure for yourself.
Basically, do you like to dabble? Is it fun to dig into something different?
Or, do you like to get really deep into one thing which can subsume your whole life?
Then you know.
There are certainly people out there, not a quarter of a mile from my office, who know all the nuclear physics, and the GR and the LIGO signal processing and characteristics.
Whether you can handle that much I can't know, but you don't know till you try, or your advisor stops you, or pushes you on.