Multidisciplinary Psychological Clinical Science: Charting the Path Forward

The “Rah-Rah” Aspect of Multidisciplinary Psychological Clinical Science

I do not think it is hyperbole to suggest that psychological clinical science might be one of the most uniquely multidisciplinary fields in all of science given the huge range of collaborations and outstanding integrative research being produced by clinical psychological scientists and their collaborators. Why might this be? It can be attributed to several different factors. First, the training model of clinical science fundamentally educates doctoral students to appreciate a wide range of scientific fields and the knowledge they generate, which can be used to help understand the causes and treatment of health concerns. Second, this type of training leads clinical scientists to understand that human behavior, brain function, and physical function can be understood only through a multidisciplinary lens because the distinctions between the environment, biology, and behavior are, to some extent, arbitrary. Furthermore, the bidirectional (frankly, multidirectional and dynamical) nature of relationships among forces outside of and within humans that shape mental and physical function requires bringing to bear a diverse array of perspectives, knowledge, and tools to make progress. Thus, both the training clinical scientists receive and the phenomena they study make multidisciplinary the norm rather than the outlier. John Cacioppo captured this perspective in his 2007 Association for Psychological Science presidential column, “Psychology Is a Hub Science” (Cacioppo, 2007). I argue that psychological clinical science is the clearest example of this in our field.

There are numerous examples of how multidisciplinary psychological clinical science has led to breakthroughs that advance understanding of the causes and treatment of human health problems. One example is the work on how early life adversity, including low socioeconomic status, leads to long-lasting pro-inflammatory states that affect the risk for both physical- and mental-health conditions (Chiang et al., 2022; Ehrlich et al., 2016; Miller et al., 2014), made possible by collaborations among clinical scientists, health psychologists, geneticists, immunologists, and even economists. Another example is the development of a range of mobile “app”-based interventions for health conditions, including cognitive-behavioral-therapy “chatbots” (Farzan et al., 2025), requiring collaborations among clinical scientists, computer scientists, and application designers. A third example is the growing body of work examining ways in which natural and built environments shape human behavior and brain development, including the impacts of environmental toxins (Liu et al., 2023; Margolis et al., 2025; Yang et al., 2025), physical activity (Feter et al., 2024; Gorham et al., 2019; Kaagman et al., 2024; Su et al., 2022), green space (Khalil, 2025; Shaughnessy et al., 2025), and even the buildings in which people live and work (Sussman & Hollander, 2021). This type of research requires collaborative efforts among a range of scientists from different fields, including chemical engineers, environmental scientists, and even architects. These are just a few examples.

The Challenges and Some Potential Paths Forward

Okay, so that is the “rah-rah” part of this commentary. The benefits and satisfaction derived from engaging in multidisciplinary psychological clinical science are real. However, there are also very real challenges to this work, and there are ways in which the field can better pave the path for future generations of clinical scientists. These challenges fall into the following key areas: (a) breadth and depth of multidisciplinary training; (b) differences in methods, perspectives, and epistemological approaches; (c) differences in approaches to knowledge dissemination; (d) challenges with “credit” assignment in collaborative team science; and (e) valuation of collaborative team science in promotion and tenure processes.

How Much Interdisciplinary Expertise Is Needed?

There are various models for training individuals to work as multidisciplinary scientists. Perhaps the most challenging approach is to train individuals, in this case, clinical scientists, so that they themselves become experts in multiple domains within either psychological science or one or more additional disciplines beyond psychological science. One example of this is the program at Indiana University, where trainees can receive a PhD in both clinical science and neuroscience, albeit with a training trajectory that is more intensive in terms of coursework and sometimes in terms of degree length. Many programs that do not have specific dual-PhD options instead support their students in obtaining extensive training in other disciplines either at the home institution or sometimes through workshops or externships at other locations. Another frequent option is for individuals to pursue training in an additional discipline as part of a postdoctoral fellowship, sometimes supported by specific training programs (e.g., NIH T32 mechanisms) designed to help individuals obtain training in new areas. These different models raise the question of how much additional discipline-specific knowledge a clinical scientist needs to engage in robust multidisciplinary research.

It can be overwhelming for individuals to feel that to engage in multidisciplinary work, they need to have as much expertise as someone trained only in another discipline. Although such depth of expertise is incredible, it is actually not necessary in many cases when you can engage in collaborative work with colleagues who have that expertise. However, what does seem critical is to have enough knowledge to understand some of the core principles, language, and methods in those other disciplines so that you can both identify relevant collaborators and share enough of a common “language” so that you can work together productively. This is where training programs that bring together students or postdocs from different backgrounds to work together can be hugely beneficial because they learn each other’s terms, concepts, and methods and can develop a cohort ethos that can actually lead them to become future collaborators across the course of their career. As one example, Washington University offers a graduate-training program called Cognitive, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience, which is open to students pursuing their PhDs in psychology, neuroscience, or biomedical engineering. Cohorts take a series of courses that span these three disciplines and enroll in classes on project building and advanced methods, which expose them to key concepts in each of the three areas. Students in this training program have gone on to collaborate with one another and report that learning alongside individuals receiving their PhDs in other disciplines was invaluable in helping them feel that they could cross fields in their own work.

The field needs more explicit conversations within programs among faculty and between faculty and trainees about the different approaches to preparing for multidisciplinary work and their pros and cons. One goal of such conversations with trainees would be to help lower any perceived barriers. It may also be helpful to develop explicit classes or workshops on the nature and process of multidisciplinary science to prepare individuals for thinking through some of the benefits and challenges of engaging in this type of work. This would allow them to make intentional choices about the kinds of training they wish to engage in and to prepare prospectively to meet some of the challenges of working collaboratively across disciplines.

Variation in Perspectives, Methods, and Epistemology Across Disciplines

A second challenge that can arise in multidisciplinary work, even when clinical scientists have received additional training, is the variation in methods, perspectives, and epistemological approaches across disciplines that may not be immediately apparent. When not apparent and not explicitly discussed, it can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or frustrations between collaborators. There are many potential examples of this, but I provide a few that I have personally encountered. One is the relative role of observational or correlational studies, which are very common in work with humans, particularly in clinical populations, versus experimental work, which is central to the research program of people who work with nonhuman species. In human work, researchers simply cannot ethically experimentally manipulate many of the things they are interested in understanding, such as adversity, whether one has a mental illness, or who one’s family is. But researchers can manipulate all of these things in work with nonhuman species. Thus, sometimes frank conversations are necessary to ensure that each type of research is valued appropriately in the collaboration.

Another example is the relative role of quantitative versus qualitative research across different disciplines or even across different fields in the same discipline. If a clinical scientist who was trained exclusively in quantitative methods collaborates with individuals from, for example, sociology, anthropology, or even social work who center qualitative research in the work, frank discussion may again be needed about the relative value of each of these approaches and the ways in which they can be mutually informative. A final example is the expectations about sample sizes necessary for robust results, which can vary dramatically across disciplines. For example, in animal research, it is not uncommon for there to be relatively small numbers of animals in each experimental condition (10 or 20) given the sometimes robust effect sizes found in such research, whereas the expectation in typical human psychological science research is for higher numbers to provide sufficient power in the face of smaller effect sizes (what that specific number is of considerable debate concurrently but often between 50 and 200 per condition). Contrast this with the expectations in genetics or epidemiology, in which the answer might be thousands or even hundreds of thousands of participants given far smaller effect sizes. Explicit discussions about these different kinds of expectations are necessary in multidisciplinary collaborations so that all parties can be on the same page and share the norms and reasons for differing approaches across fields. Doing this prospectively can help avoid challenging situations in which expectations go unspoken and lead to disagreements or a breakdown in productive collaboration.

Variation in Approaches to Knowledge Dissemination

Another potential challenge to multidisciplinary work is the differences across fields in how knowledge is shared within one’s own community and with others outside of it. Again, there are many possible examples of this; I provide a few from my own experience. A frequent one is that fields vary dramatically in how authorship and authorship order are determined. This is also true in psychological science, in which some areas have adopted a more “biomedical” model such that the person who did the primary writing and/or analysis is the first author and the mentor or advisor is the last (“senior”) author. In other areas, authorship order linearly reflects the relative contributions of each individual to the work. Another example is whether it is standard to bundle multiple studies into one article versus each study being a stand-alone article and when replications are needed before publication. Although it is becoming increasingly common in psychological science for articles to include multiple studies, the majority of psychological clinical-science publications are still single studies. However, in animal work, it is very common for articles to include many different “studies” or pieces of evidence for a theory or hypothesis. Furthermore, in some fields, it is common to expect findings to be replicated within an article, especially if analyses are exploratory in nature (e.g., machine-learning approaches). Another example is expectations about where knowledge is disseminated. In psychological science, the primary outlet is still publication in peer-reviewed journals. However, in some fields, it is becoming increasingly common to post manuscripts on preprint servers either in place of or in addition to peer-reviewed publications. In some fields (e.g., economics), articles are put online as “working papers” open to comment and critique from colleagues before they are formally published (similar to the manuscript-repository approach). Each of these differences across fields can lead to conflict among collaborators when it is time to share the knowledge generated from the collaboration if not discussed and resolved early in the collaborative process. Topics such as these could be included in workshops or classes designed to educate investigators and trainees about the process of multidisciplinary science.

Credit Assignment in Multidisciplinary Team Science and the Promotion Process

One of the biggest challenges with multidisciplinary psychological clinical science is exactly what makes it so special—that is, that a team of individuals with diverse expertise comes together to create a project that none of them could have accomplished individually. This then often leads to the question of how each member of that team gets appropriate “credit” for their contributions to the work and how to ensure that different types of roles are seen as equally important. This challenge is compounded by the typical approach to publishing research, in which there is only a single first author and a single last author on any one article. It is increasingly common for articles to have co-first authors, which can definitely help in such situations, and there are even some instances of co-last authors. Nonetheless, even with such flexibility in authorship, it can be challenging to ensure that all contributors receive due credit.

This challenge is compounded when one or more team members are still going through the tenure and/or promotion process, in which the unique contributions of an individual to the individual’s program of research are often emphasized. Many universities now claim that they value interdisciplinary work and team science. However, few have grappled with how to explicitly value that in the promotion process and how to evaluate critical contributions to team science. This can be disincentivizing for individuals earlier in their career to engage in collaborative work because they may be concerned or even explicitly warned that it will hurt them in the tenure process. I have had many early career investigators tell me that their chair or department advised them not to collaborate extensively with others until after receiving tenure. Some universities have addressed this challenge by establishing an explicit faculty track, labeled something like “team science,” to recognize contributions to collaborative efforts. For example, Northwestern University’s medical school offers a “team scientist career track.” Other schools offer specific guidance on evaluating collaborative contributions. The University of Virginia, for example, offers specific criteria for evaluating candidates involved in collaborative team science, with a particular emphasis on letters from collaborators that highlight their contributions and letters from reviewers that underscore how the collaboration creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Although these efforts on the part of some universities to value team science are important and need to be expanded, this remains a significant challenge for any scientist who engages in multidisciplinary work. For more established investigators, it is likely not a major barrier because such individuals have often established their own domain of expertise before coming together with scholars from other fields to do collaborative work. However, for early career investigators who want to build a multidisciplinary psychological clinical science research program from the start, it will be crucially important to have prospective and forthright conversations with colleagues, mentors, and department chairs/supervisors about how to ensure that their contributions are valued and recognized.

Summary

I firmly believe that multidisciplinary psychological clinical science is a crucial path forward for the field and that significant insights and innovations will emerge from these collaborations, ultimately helping prevent mental-health challenges, improve human health, and reduce suffering. However, at the same time, psychological clinical scientists cannot ignore the challenges associated with this approach to science and need to be more open and forthcoming in discussing these challenges with colleagues and trainees. This will provide the opportunity for open dialogue across disciplines, enabling productive and long-lasting collaborations. The examples I offered above are anecdotal and reflect my own experiences and what I have heard from colleagues. It will be important to gather information on challenges and successful solutions to those challenges more systematically. The field’s professional societies could be helpful in this way by spearheading surveys that gather such information from members and sharing it with the community. In the past decades of growing multidisciplinary clinical science, psychological clinical scientists have been building the plane as they have been flying it. The field now has enough knowledge to build a better plane prospectively.