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If researchers from different disciplines are brought into the same room, how long will it take them to work together effectively? In thermodynamics, this does not seem to be an impossibility; however, with kinetics, the time required could well stretch into infinity, and the facilitator has to find a catalyst. In looking into the possible effects of popularization on practising researchers, this article attempts to show that the presence of lay people at interdisciplinary meetings tends to promote encounters between information from different disciplines by influencing its quality and mobility.