[fritzo]

While Pachter enumerates differences in culture and breakdowns in collaboration, I feel the root cause is individual social attitude. The two cultures differ because their self-selected members differ in personality. What drew me to study math was the department's attitude of anarchy and irreverence. Status didn't matter, funding didn't matter, appearance didn't matter, prerequisites didn't matter, you just needed two people and two pieces of chalk and a blackboard and an afternoon. By contrast biologists I've worked with have been acutely attuned to hierarchy and funding strategy and marketing and credit attribution - social maneuvering that would fall as flat in math departments[1] as "third cohomology group" falls flat on Nature's reviewers.

[1] in my limited experience of two math departments

[klyrs]

In my limited experience...

Status matters. Politics are nasty. Every subfield has its own culture, its own royalty. Better funded professors get more and higher status students. Bigotry is common, and so are "quirky personalities" -- and due to the tolerance of weirdos, bigotry is assumed to not exist. Mathematicians are not without their people problems. Just like every other slice of humanity, they lie to themselves.

[tbitrust]

> Status didn't matter

Allow me to doubt that mathematics departments are immune to status competition.

[fritzo]

Sure a segment of the population aims for department head, but another segment is happy just being left alone to do their thing and pay via teaching. It was this less ambitious more self-motivated group who attracted me.

[nextos]

I think you are super right. As someone with extensive Math and pure CS training, this has been my experience working in Biology vs Math departments.