2025/07/08 by Danish A. Ahmed, Lorenzo Vilizzi, Ali Serhan Tarkan +29 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · #Climate Change Communication and Perception #Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
paper · doi:10.1093/biosci/biaf122
openalex publication_date 2025/07/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
“Let us not speak of them; but look, and pass on.” (Dante, 1867/1320, Inferno, Canto III, line 51). These words could apply to both our original work (Ahmed et al. 2025a) and the response by South et al. (2025). In Ahmed et al. (2025a), we assembled a diverse, interdisciplinary team spanning natural and social sciences to critically unpack the risks of conflating biological invasions and human migration. This effort was met with a response that selectively quoted, misrepresented, and misconstrued our argument; showcasing that decontextualization and unsubstantiated inferences do not merely distort academic dialogue and impair the collaborative spirit but undermine the very foundations of scholarly exchange in contentious interdisciplinary terrain. This situation highlights a broader issue, prompting reflection and renewed attention to the principles of academic freedom, epistemic honesty, and the responsibility of critique, especially when sensitive human realities are at stake. There is an ever-growing need for rigorous scholarly inquiry to address the increasingly complex, interdisciplinary problems that emerge at the intersection of biological and social domains. Recent academic and public debates illustrate how approaches, tools, and terminologies can yield unintended sociopolitical consequences and conceptual confusion when uncritically applied between disciplines. Such missteps risk compromising the very conditions under which academic freedom, editorial independence, and intellectual pluralism can thrive, particularly when dealing with sensitive human realities (Green 2023, Speri 2025). In the spirit of Karl Popper's assertion that “the growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement” (Popper 1994), we believe it is crucial to engage these dynamics openly and reflectively (Russell and Blackburn 2017).