{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03424657534246575, 'fraction_numerical': 0.012644889357218124, 'mean_word_length': 5.525773195876289, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
More False Dichotomies: Play, Leisure, Environmental Enrichment, and Important Science Questions

Most researchers would agree that dichotomies between the biomedical sciences and the social sciences have created academic camps that largely act in isolation. Biomedical scientists are unacquainted with or give little heed to research conducted by social scientists and social scientists are unaware of or disregard studies completed by biomedical scientists. We argue in this essay that this division is bad news for researchers examining play and leisure. Territoriality inhibits intellectual growth, prevents scientists from thinking more broadly, limits cross-fertilization of ideas, and ultimately hinders abilities to address important science questions. In this essay we explore how sharing between biomedical and social science researchers could help address a debilitating disease. One of the most important biomedical puzzles driving basic scientific research (Kennedy & Norman, 2005) is the extent to which people can stave off Alzheimer’s disease. We chose this focus for two reasons. First, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a significant social, economic, and policy issue for the United States. Currently 4.5 million Americans have AD. By 2025 the number will increase 44% (Herbert, Scherr, Bienies, Bennett, & Evans, 2003). Second, controlled studies on animal behavior have increased understanding of AD at the sub-cellular, cellular, biochemical, and molecular levels (Spires & Hannan, 2005). A growing awareness among social scientists is the belief that large-scale processes such as leisure are linked to AD (e.g., Scarmeas, Levy, Tang, Manly, & Stern, 2001). Yet collaboration on AD between social scientists and biomedical researchers is limited. Most important, collaboration between researchers examining play and leisure and researchers in the biomedical field is nearly absent.