Independence and Cooperation in Research. The Motivations and Costs of Collaboration.

Freedom and independence are strong precepts in science and scholarship [12, 13, 21, 32]. Scientists are expected to select problems freely, to exercise independent judgment in methods and techniques, and to evaluate without restraint the validity of their own results and those of others [12]. As a correlate to these structural norms, scholarship tends to attract the "solitary mind" [6]. Biographical and clinical studies show consistently that productive scientists are independent, self-sufficient, and self-directed. In an early study, Ann Roe concluded that "the most important single factor in the making of a scientist [is] the need and ability to develop personal independence to a high degree" [29, p. 25]. This autonomy is exhibited early in scientists' lives and is apparent in their preference for teachers who let them alone and in their dispositions toward interpersonal relations [29]. As adults, productive scientists tend to be detached from their immediate families, isolated from social relations, and attached to the objects and abstract ideas of their work [4, 30, 33]. Productive scientists emerge as "strongly motivated, dominant person[s] who are not overly concerned with other persons' lives or with obtaining approval for the work Ithev arel doing" 1[4 n. 12041.