Is there a hybrid?  I would prefer to be a winged frog.  I enjoy studying the details which help me identify problems, but at times it's important to step away & observe from a distance to make sure nothing is missed. 

If you are a frog marry a bird, if you are a bird marry a frog. Work in a tandem. Your marriage will survive when roles can be changed: let the frog act as a bird and vice versa. My experience comes from grounded theory: during coding you have to keep in mind  your theoretical horizon  and at the same time you must seriously (without prejudgements) listen to your respondent. This can be easily achieved by a frog-bird-tandem. But do not imagine that the interaction between frog and bird is always peaceful. Close the office door, be patient and considered the result at the end of the day.

Dear Kid Cowles, your idea is also very interesting. Yes, I do not know if there is any concrete bound or border between these two types. But usually, scientists choose one of them in the future by most of their manner of doing research. It doesn't matter they know or don't know these two types. Your idea is interesting that if it is easy to be a hybrid type. It seems not only a singly but whole communities (may be researchers in a country also) may relate to one of these types. Because, I see soviet union countries had exhibited a tendency to be a bird type research in the past. It has a good and bad impact to today's science.

It is very fruitful thinking to wonder how types of researchers are linked to a political and social background. Grounded theory is in particular attractive because it allows a combination of froglike and birdlike approaches. Discovery the seminal book by Strauss and Glaser was written in a specific context: they worked in California far away from the social centers at the East coast; they were marginal sociologists as they mainly taught nurses and worked in the context of hospitals considering questions like illness and dying; they reacted against a divide of the discipline into two storeys: the upper one occupied by birdy grand theory producers, the lower one occupied by froggy hypotheses testers. Grounded theory avoids that beginners are confined in a brainless work and opens the way to conceptual work for them. Grounded theory entering main stream research is probably linked to the end of the cold war. In a nutshell, I think its worth developing your observation on the soviet system and its research cultures.

Due to my diverse background, I have been exposed to many cultures and disciplines.  Although what I have learned from everything so far, is that I don't know enough!  So I try to keep learning, especially from my mistakes, & my peers.  I learn things everyday, but what I love the most, is helping others!  I wish that in today's fast pace, that we could all slow down a little and enjoy a little more.  :)

Learning from mistakes is so important. One of my favourite books on interviewing is Charles L. Briggs, Learning how to ask. It is in no way normative, but based on the analysis of communicative blunders. So be a frog, or be bird, but be it in a reflective way. This will help you reaching a hybrid status, wings will grow to the frogs, and birds will learn to dive in the mud.

Shian-Loong Bernard Lew · 9.85 · Taylor's University

Dear Nodirali,

Very interesting metaphor that is quite apt, as you say for any scientific, and [if I might add] research environment! I think that an effective "bird" was once an effective "frog"; that over the years received enough "bragging rights" and credibility to survey the vista for new patches of land for "frogs" to colonize. The current state-of-affairs does not really allow "frogs" to metamorphosize into a "birds" (occasionally?) so that "frogs" can easily be disillusioned with their role in the "larger picture." "Birds" that attempt unification without at the same time cultivating a "frog" mentality eventually get shot out of the scholastic heavens. It reminds me of a book with a metaphorical title that resonates with your question (link#): when we get an inverted pyramid of too many "birds" with too little "frogs" with have an ecological disaster in that discipline.

One limitation to this metaphor, if we take a holistic view to science, some sciences are considered "birds" science and some are regarded as "frogs" science.

http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470406755.html

Wiley: Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy the Financial Markets? - Pablo Triana, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Dear Shian-Loong,

Thank you for your interesting idea and well discussing another part of the object too. Before reading of Freeman Dyson's lecture I had some opinion, but was not sure that sometimes the whole schools (I mean research schools - may be the research environment, as you write), even systems can affect and belong itself to one of these part. I think, people, who "lived" in different environment can feel the difference of them. Of course, the environment directly direct you for one of these type if you breathe or "watered" in the medium. I am not sure, but by my opinion, they want or do not want, the researchers belong one of these type by their manners.

I imagine also, what will be in case of disbalance between these two types.

With this question I would to know the researchers opinion that how they feel themselves as a researcher and why they prefer to be just in this role.