For the Sciences They Are A‐Changin’: A Response to Commentaries on Núñez et al.’s (2019) “What Happened to Cognitive Science?”

A recent issue of Topics in Cognitive Science featured 11 thoughtful commentaries responding to our article “What happened to cognitive science?” (Núñez et al., 2019). Here, we identify several themes that arose in those commentaries and respond to each. Crucial to understanding our original article is the fundamental distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavors: Cognitive science began (and has stayed) as multidisciplinary but has failed to move on to form a cohesive interdisciplinary field. We clarify and elaborate our original argument and reiterate the importance of a data‐driven evaluation of the current status of the field, which exhibits a marked disciplinary imbalance, a lack of a coherent conceptual core, and a striking absence of a consistent curriculum in the institutions that grant degrees in this domain. Half a century after the creation of cognitive science, it may now be a good time to revisit goals and visions for how to best approach the ever‐fascinating scientific study of the mind(s).     

Graves’ disease and pregnancy

This section deals with the specificities of managing Graves’ disease during pregnancy. Graves’ disease incurs risks of fetal, neonatal and maternal complications that are rare but may be severe: fetal hyper- or hypothyroidism, usually first showing as fetal goiter, neonatal dysthyroidism, premature birth and pre-eclampsia. Treatment during pregnancy is based on antithyroid drugs alone, without association to levothyroxine. An history of Graves’ disease, whether treated radically or not, with persistent maternal anti-TSH-receptor antibodies must be well identified. Fetal monitoring should be initiated in a multidisciplinary framework that should be continued throughout pregnancy. Neonatal monitoring is also crucial if the mother still shows anti-TSH-receptor antibodies at end of pregnancy or underwent antithyroid treatment. The risk of recurrence of hyperthyroidism in the weeks following delivery requires maternal monitoring. The long-term neuropsychological progression of children of mothers with Graves’ disease is poorly known.     

Type and Consequences of Short-Term Complications in Colon Cancer Surgery,Focusing on the Oldest Old

BackgroundWhile the proportion of colon cancer occurring in older patients is expected to increase, these patients may have more complications that may lead to serious consequences. The aim of this study was assess postoperative complications and their short-term consequences in colon cancer surgery according to age.Patients and MethodsPatients undergoing surgery for primary invasive colon cancer in 22 centers between June 2010 and December 2012 were included. Presurgical and surgical variables were analyzed, and in-hospital major postoperative complications and its most serious consequence (no relevant, transfusion, reintervention, admission to the intensive care unit, or death) were estimated according to age group. Chi-square tests were used to analyze the possible associations between variables and age groups.ResultsData from 1976 patients, mean (range) age 68 (24-97) years, 62% men, were analyzed; 52.2% were aged > 69 years and 17.7% were aged > 79 years. The complication rate was 25.3%, reaching 30.9% in those aged ≥ 80 years. Older age was associated with a higher rate of postoperative infections during the hospital stay. The most common surgical complication in patients aged > 85 years was dehiscence of the anastomosis (11.5%). About 5% of patients with major complications died in the hospital (11.1% of those aged 80-84 years and 14.3% aged > 85 years). Among patients aged > 85 years, 38.1% required transfusions.ConclusionOlder patients should receive appropriate functional preparation before the intervention, and when the risks of the intervention outweigh the potential benefits, a nonsurgical approach may be preferable.     

Apport de la transdisciplinarité sans perdre sa spécificité de kinésithérapeute dans la rééducation d’un enfant polyhandicapé : étude de cas

This paper presents the case study of Julie, a 5-year-old child presenting a cerebral palsy. Her motor function level is rated V on the Gross Motor Function Classification System for cerebral palsy (GMFCS) and her manual ability is rated V on the Manual Ability Classification Scale (MACS). Her communication level is rated IV on the Système de classification des fonction de communication (SCFC). Our work focuses on the major hypertonia observed with this child and which massively alter her voluntary motor skills. The analysis was led through an interdisciplinary re-education team and enabled us to consider the different roots for these contractions. Not only is the neuromotor function altered by the brain injury leading to an inflated basal state of contraction, but the sensory, psychological and emotional dimensions were also taken into account to understand Julie's behavior in relation to her exaggerated contractions. Based on this multidimensional diagnosis, a collective process led to a physiological and educative therapy in order to allow this young girl with multiple disabilities to achieve a certain level of control over her contractions. The installations, the organization of her environment and an adapted educational framework were the three areas chosen to answer the three identified dimensions of pathological contraction. Regulating her state of contraction appears as a necessary step towards optimizing her expression and accessing an improved state of relaxation and comfort – a key element to support her general development.     

Multidisciplinary public health: what sort of victory?

Multidisciplinary public health (MDPH) has been a phenomenon in the UK of the 1990s and the early 21st century. Its achievement has been seen as a victory for non medical interests. While acknowledging this, the paper questions what sort of victory this represents. Public health in its sanitary phase in the mid-19th century was, after all, what passed for multidisciplinary with its mix of engineers, doctors and statisticians. Is the present simply a return to the sanitary phase? The paper argues that it is not, and that contemporary public health badly needs clearer definition. It identifies three dimensions of recent public health. Public health can be an occupation; a discourse or movement, and also an institutional location of which public health research is part. Looked at in this frame, public health has been multidisciplinary in the post war period. The development of public health research out of social medicine in the 1950s was multidisciplinary. Public health campaigning, separate from public health professionals, has also been multidisciplinary since the 1970s. Public health as an occupation has been preoccupied with its professional positioning. Will the wider multidisciplinary impetus of public health now be lost in a preoccupation with status?     

Now you see it,now you don’t: A discourse view of disability and multidisciplinarity

Disability is increasingly salient as a word and increasingly heterogeneous as a category. Multiple interest groups and professions define disability in different ways, making it impossible to achieve a unitary theoretical definition or singular model-explanation of disability as a phenomenon. It is in the interest both of disability scholars and disabled people to acknowledge the multiple understandings of disability, and to appropriate ways of thinking and talking about disability that are often seen as antithetical to a progressive understanding of disability. This particularly applies to medical language, which may be used to deepen our understanding of disability without the traditionally attendant problem of medicalization. Such a project requires a deeper engagement with the particularities of medical language, but also with chronic illness, which is sometimes dichotomized from impairment on spurious grounds. Disability studies should acknowledge the utility of medical language as a tool for people with chronic illnesses as well as impairments to conceptualize their embodied experience, and strive for ways to situate medical language within a sociopolitically progressive understanding of chronic illness, impairment, and disability.     

Dos décadas de actividades puente entre la farmacología,la epidemiología y la salud pública en España

Unsurprisingly, disciplines such as epidemiology, public health and pharmacology have points of confluence. Consequently, in Spain, both professionals and organizations from these disciplines have collaborated on many different activities altogether. This article compiles two decades of shared initiatives among these fields, coordinated by the Esteve Foundation. We discuss 20 collaborations, including face-to-face activities and joint publications. These activities involved numerous institutions and over 1,000 professionals. Among other activities, we would like to stress the training activities in scientific writing and editing. In particular, we highlight the 32 editions of a training workshop on how to write a scientific article, which has been running since 2004 to the present day. We conclude that collaborations between different institutions and professionals have acted and will continue to act as a bridge between disciplines and to contribute to scientific progress from a multidisciplinary perspective