I would look to how I can leverage the two, I know there is a lot of open source in these fields and that does not create a great opportunity for direct payment for your development efforts but their are ways to leverage your knowledge of the field and development skills. For example, if your industry relies on aggregating a lot of public data, you may be able to build a company that designed tools that collect that data, and then sell the refined data to researcher.

Or you can always develop out a niche site that caters to that research, where individuals in the industry can get relevant news about the industry.

You can contact researchers in the field and see if they need development services for custom applications and set up a freelancing shop that supports several researcher.

To me there should be a way to combine to two, to compete in a market that you have already built value in. I am not disparaging web development, a lot of people will say web developers are a dime a dozen, but the reality is good developers are probably one of the rarest skill-sets on the planet and therein lies the problem, to become a skilled web developer takes years, I would say almost a decade of experience, because the web is always changing, until you have seen it change a few times, you have not mastered the skills of adaptation. Which are requisite for future-proofing applications.

I am getting off on a tangent, but the point is make sure you are ready to start over, because switching oars now means beginning the assent up river again, for some industries their is no choice, just make sure you have looked at all the options in yours, before you decide it is one that there truly is no choice.