Amen Dave; you are sooo dead-on about, in my words, 'the deliberate and pervasive elimination of ... complexity in academics' (the system seems designed to prevent original thought and risk taking). As to the subject of specialization: this has been a progressive 'problem' for many decades. As early as 1928 Freud wrote his book "Die Zukunft einer Illusion" (The Future of an Illusion) and on the very first page he writes: "In particular because there are only few people that can grasp the matters of humans in all its expansions. For the most restriction to a single or a few areas has become necessary; but the less one knows about the past and present, the more insecure must be his view on the future."* Key question therefore is: is the field of management science (such) a restriction / specialization? As it, obviously, should not be!

*Vor allem dadurch, daß es nur wenige Personen gibt, die das menschliche Getriebe in all seinen Ausbreitungen überschauen können. Für die meisten ist Beschränkung auf ein einzelnes oder wenige Gebiete notwendig geworden; je weniger aber einer vom Vergangenen und Gegenwärtigen weiß, desto unsicherer muß sein Urteil über das Zukünftige ausfallen.

Your observation is echoed in the climate science field, governed for 20 years by academia types that have perverted the scientific method in pursuit of government funding and ideological bandwagons. The introduction to "The Climategate Emails" (Dec 2009) by Dr. John Costella (Physics), reflects the siloed thinking you observed and which hinders innovation and course corrections in favor of intellectual preening. 

Why Climategate is so Distressing to Scientists

EXCERPT

". . . a scientific discipline can maintain a 'closed shop' mentality for a while, but eventually the institutions and funding agencies that provide the lifeblood of their work - the money that pays their wages and funds their research - will begin to question the relevance and usefulness of the discipline, particularly in relation to other disciplines that are competing for the same funds. This will generally be seen by the affected scientists as 'political interference', but it is a reflection of their descent into arrogance and delusions of self-importance for them to believe that only they themselves are worthy of judging their own merits.

"Second, scientists who are capable and worthy, but unfairly 'locked out' of a given discipline, will generally migrate to other disciplines in which the scientific process is working as it should. Dysfunctional disciplines will, in time, atrophy, in favour of those that are healthy and dynamic.

"The Climategate emails show that these self-regulating mechanisms simply failed to work in the case of climate science - perhaps because 'climate science' is itself an aggregation of many different and disparate scientific disciplines. Those component disciplines are extremely challenging.

. . .

"The science of each of these disciplines is well-defined and rigorous, and there are many good scientists working in these fields. But the real difficulty is the 'stitching together' of all of these results in a way that allows answers to the fundamental questions: How much effect has mankind had on the temperature of the planet? And how much difference would it make if we did things differently?

"It is at this 'stitching together' layer of science - one could call it a “meta-discipline” - that the principles of the scientific method have broken down. Reading through the Climategate emails, one can see members of that community - usually those with slightly different experience and wisdom than the power-brokers - questioning (as they should) this 'stitching together' process, particularly with regard to the extremely subtle mathematical methods that need to be used to try to extract answers. Now, these mathematical and statistical methods are completely within my own domain of expertise; and I can testify that the criticisms are sensible, carefully thought-out, and completely valid; these are good scientists, asking the right questions.

"So what reception do they get? Instead of embracing this diversity of knowledge - thanking them for their experience (no one knows everything about everything) and using that knowledge to improve their own calculations - these power-brokers of climate science instead ignore, fob off, ridicule, threaten, and ultimately black-ball those who dare to question the methods that they - the power-brokers, the leaders - have used. And do not be confused: I am here talking about those scientists within their own camps, not the 'skeptics' which they dismiss out of hand." . . . 

John Costella, 10 December 2009

I have read Dr. Costella's full analysis of Climategate and recommend it as a relevant example of the fraud, fabrication and falsification that can creep in when outside voices are excluded from the debate. It has been widely accepted as an excellent assessment. The U.S. Department of Energy has suspended grants to the University of East Anglia (after the three whitewash investigations that even the "New Scientist" considered bogus). Also of note are an ongoing academic investigation and NASA lawsuit targeting U.S. accomplices to the Climategate scandal.

As to your curiosity observation I do so miss physicist Richard Feynman. His well known "Cargo Cult" commencement address at Cal Tech in 1974 should be required reading for any scientific endeavor.

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." - Richard Feynman