Seeking evidence of multidisciplinarity in environmental geochemistry and health: an analysis of arsenic in drinking water research

Abstract

A multidisciplinary approach to research affords the opportunity of objectivity, creation of new knowledge and potentially a more generally acceptable solution to problems that informed the research in the first place. It increasingly features in national programmes supporting basic and applied research, but for over 40 years, has been the arena for many research teams in environmental geochemistry and health. This study explores the nature of multidisciplinary research in the earth and health sciences using a sample selected from co-authored articles reporting research on arsenic (As) in drinking water from 1979 to 2013. A total of 889 relevant articles were sourced using the online version of the science citation index—expanded (SCI-expanded). The articles were classified according to author affiliation and later by author discipline/research interests using the Revised Field of Science and Technology Frascati manual DSTI/EAS/STP/NESTI (2006) 19/FINAL and a decision algorithm. Few articles were published on the topic until 2000. More articles were published across all affiliations in the last 10 years of the review period (2004–2013) than in the first 10 years (1979–1988). Only 84 (~9%) articles fell within the “earth and health” only and “earth, health and other” categories when classification was undertaken by author affiliation alone. This suggests that level of collaboration between earth and health scientists in arsenic in drinking water research may be very low. By refining the classification further using author discipline/research interests, only 28 of the 84 articles appear to be co-authored by earth and health scientists alongside professionals in other fields. More than half of these 28 articles involved descriptive non-experimental, observational study designs, limited in direct causal hypotheses and mechanistic investigation. If collaborative research is to lead to the increased multidisciplinary research, early interaction should be encouraged between students from different disciplines. In order to achieve multidisciplinarity in practise, it is imperative that scientific communities and research agencies do more to encourage interaction and integration between researchers from different disciplines. This must develop from educational institutions seeing opportunities to improve graduate skills in an increasingly diverse research landscape.

Machine Learning Models of Arsenic in Private Wells Throughout the Conterminous United States As a Tool for Exposure Assessment in Human Health Studies

“…Linking human-health outcomes to environmental exposure can be challenging when the data are available on different geographic scales or no exposure data are available. However, methods are increasingly being developed to make these linkages more achievable. , The previously developed LR model was used as a covariate in studies of national scale human health data. , The machine learning models developed here are an improvement upon the previous model and will provide additional information for future environmental epidemiology studies. Until now, spatially continuous geographic data on arsenic occurrence at varying concentrations in private-supply drinking water has been lacking within the U.S. Our arsenic models provide a new and coherent resource to evaluate associations of private well arsenic occurrence at various concentrations with human health outcomes at the CONUS scale.…”

“…However, methods are increasingly being developed to make these linkages more achievable. 107,108 The previously developed LR model was used as a covariate in studies of national scale human health data. 109,110 The machine learning models developed here are an improvement upon the previous model and will provide additional information for future environmental epidemiology studies.…”

A Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Supported Ionic Liquid Membranes during the 1995–2015 Period: Study of the Main Applications and Trending Topics

“…Academic publications in scientific journals are considered the most important resources for this type of bibliometric analysis [ 19 ]. Bibliometric methods have been used to measure scientific progress in many disciplines of science and engineering and are a common research instrument for systematic analysis of research trends [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Environment and Human Health: The Challenge of Uncertainty in Risk Assessment

“…Public Health professionals can thus make an important contribution, both from their understanding of health and disease, as well as through facilitation of the integration of hard and soft evidence from different stakeholders. The skills needed in our professional circles include the necessary high quality subject specialism as well as the ability to integrate across disciplines [107]. This is an effective and powerful way to address complex humanenvironment relationships but is fraught with many challenges, none the least in learning the language of contributing disciplines.…”