It is a disturbing question, in general. Such as: How much new science is being missed by brain-power sequestored in IT departments making a decent income re-writing programs to calculate taxes on teddy bear sales?
At least in theory, data scientist may be generating techniques and models relevant to multiple applications (if those applications are made or allowed to be made.) I could easily imagine population linking models being used to increase the understanding of epigenetics. My futurist projection is that the hottest area in 10-15 years will be cross-pollination.
Exactly-- and this isn't really news to anyone in STEM, or shouldn't be, anyway. It's been true for the past three decades that one of the hottest tickets in all of STEM is to be a cross-disciplinary polymath. The smartest, most capable people in new/emerging/cross-disciplinary fields aren't the ones trained in that specialty, but the ones that have trained using the supporting or related ones (plural) since their understanding is deeper in both domains. Better leverage.
This is, when you get right down to it, what informatics specialists and quants are doing as well; leveraging multiple training domains and formidable intellect on a different, unrelated domain and tasks.
