Certainly, the way we train graduate students has evolved; we have moved toward interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches (Vogel et al., 2014), with increasing recognition of the need for scientific teams with diverse and complementary expertise to tackle the challenges inherent in understanding complex behavioral health outcomes, such as alcohol problems. But frequently, we conceptualize interdisciplinary teams as comprised of other scientists with diverse expertise. The move toward integrated, interdisciplinary teams has not been nearly as inclusive of two other groups that I would argue have much to offer basic science: (1) the public, to include our research participants, as well as the broader community of individuals who will presumably benefit from our research; and (2) collaborators with expertise in diverse fields related to the communication of ideas, who can be tremendously helpful at both the front end and back end of our research.
