Ian Goldin, quoted in the article “Multidisciplinary research ‘career suicide’ for junior academics” (News, 3 May), seems to view top journals as highly specialised. I know that Science and Nature don’t generally include Classics, but I think they are fairly interdisciplinary.
Perhaps he should read them more closely. The advances in archaeology and the tracking of peoples using mutation rates may cast a wee bit of light on Classics. I think that his pessimism for junior academics pursuing interdisciplinary research is unwarranted. And while I’m glad he feels that the study of the humanities involves a skill set of enquiry based on evidence, a more multidisciplinary view would reveal that the same is true of science.
Richard C. Hartley
Professor of chemical biology
University of Glasgow
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