The reorganization of basic science departments in U.S. medical schools, 1980-1999

The evolution of biomedical science and technology over the last 50 years has made biomedical research inherently interdisciplinary. Such changes have led observers to speculate about the ways in which traditional basic science departments in U.S. medical schools are being changed or consolidated. The authors describe their findings from a study that constructed a 20-year longitudinal database (1980-1999) to examine how basic science departments have been reorganized at U.S. medical schools. The data reveal that, in fact, there were fewer basic science departments in the traditional disciplines of anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, and physiology in 1999 than in 1980. But as biomedical science has developed in an interdisciplinary manner, new basic science departments have been added. The most frequent type of change, however, has been in the renaming of existing departments. Overall, there were more, not fewer, basic science departments and more, not fewer, faculty members in these departments. These changes, taken together with the growth of interdisciplinary research centers and institutes and changing patterns of biomedical PhD training, affect both teaching and research in academic medicine. First, basic scientists are becoming increasingly dissociated from the traditional disciplines around which medical students' education is often organized. Second, the organization of biomedical research is in a state of transition that is responding to advances in scientific knowledge, technology, and targets of opportunity.