Merton, R. K. (1942). A note on science and democracy. J. Legal & Pol. Soc., 1, 115.
Note: The normally-used citation for Mertonian norms is “The normative structure of science”, but I couldn’t find a digital copy of it. Anyway, this one came out the same year and is still quite good.
I forget where I originally came across the concept of Mertonian norms (maybe from Simine Vazire’s condemning reply tweet about the Stanford Prison Experiment), but they resonated with me. Robert Merton was a Columbia professor who is regarded by many as the “founding father” of sociology. He popularized the terms “role model”, “unintended consequences”, and “self-fulfilling prophecy”. These terms are so widely used amongst the social sciences that I was honestly surprised to learn that that a single person was responsible for them. Long story short – he was a smart guy. Merton held that there are four “institutional imperatives” that “comprise the ethos of modern science.” They are universalism, organized skepticism, disinterestedness, and communism. Universalism and organized skepticism seem related, as do disinterestedness and communism.
Universalism
Universalism is the belief that truth is true, regardless of its source. In an increasingly politicized environment (though, as Merton noted, this is not a new thing), knowledge that falls outside party lines can increasingly be taken to task. Remember Donohue and Levitt’s “The impact of legalized abortion on crime”? This paper, made even more famous for its coverage in Freakonomics, said that states that allowed abortion before the 1973 Roe v. Wade case saw crime declines earlier than states that waited until 1973. The kicker is that these declines didn’t come until the 1990s, when the children who were aborted would have been approaching adulthood. In other words, the possible criminals of the future were instead aborted, thereby reducing crime rates. This finding infuriated conservative anti-abortion activists, who attempted to poke holes in the study. Regardless of one’s personal stance on abortion, it is an interesting case study. My takeaway from the idea of universalism is that we all preferentially treat knowledge with which we agree. This can be dangerous to the general public (it tends to squash diversity of thought) and especially to scientists, who are supposed to be knowledge’s gatekeepers. As a scientist, and even as a person, I should be open to the fact that I might be wrong.
Organized Skepticism
On the other hand, we should not simply accept everything that is published in a journal (especially in today’s world of “pay to publish” journals). Merton calls this organized skepticism[^1]. Such unconditional acceptance can lead to situations like the current replication crisis. Instead, knowledge, especially knowledge that seems to fly in the face of already established knowledge, should be thoroughly vetted. One application of this organized skepticism can be seen in the peer-review process of journals. Another application, especially for more positivistic and quantitative research, involves looking at the statistical power of the experiments. In the same vein, good science can and should be replicated.
todo: add in a note about Kuhn here
Disinterestedness
Merton also made the point that scientists should, as a goal, be working for the benefit of the greater scientific community at large, as opposed to personal gain. Especially at a public university, tax dollars are being invested in the development of a PhD (one dean I talked to estimated the cost of a 5-year PhD to be anywhere from $300-$500k). There is an expectation that that investment will one day be repaid by advancements in knowledge provided by that PhD. In a day where the second largest hirer of economists (behind the Federal Reserve) is Amazon, more and more business PhDs are finding themselves working at tech companies. This isn’t necessarily bad, but if they are only contributing to proprietary knowledge, then that is bad. Knowledge needs to cross-pollinate (again, see that past point about replication), and knowledge that does not move will probably stagnate. Some companies have allowed researchers to publish (though this might be because the very best researchers wouldn’t work at a place where they couldn’t publish) - see Google’s immense contribution to NLP technologies.
Communism
On that same note, Merton advocates for common ownership of scientific knowledge, “The scientist’s claim to ‘his’ intellectual ‘property’ is limited to that of recognition and esteem.” That is an idea that flies firmly in the face of competitive edge and proprietary knowledge and non-compete agreements. Capitalism is, in essence, built around scarcity of resources and one of those resources is knowledge. Again, I’d like to sidestep a philosophical debate here, but I do agree with these impulses. So much of my learning has been through YouTube videos and online blogs, aside from just journal articles and books. I firmly believe that the learning that I’ve been able to access should be accessible to all. I’m pleased to see more and more articles available on Google Scholar (or even the probably-illegal Library Genesis). While I do believe that capital markets lend themselves to competition and competition can definitely swiftly advance knowledge, I’m not sure that we have yet, as a society, reached an optimal balance between proprietary and public knowledge.
[^1] Merton actually spelled it as “scepticism” just in case someone is searching for that spelling.
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