Autonomy Is the Pulsing Heart of Science

With “Merton Redux: Re-Confronting the Norms of Science in Democracy” (Issues, Spring 2026), Natalie B. Aviles and Janet Vertesi should be applauded for revisiting Robert K. Merton and Vannevar Bush—and encouraging us to join them. Whether “rereading Merton now, even more than revisiting Bush,” as the authors insist, is an accurate observation, no doubt Merton and Bush shared a valuable perspective worth examining anew. Autonomy of the individual scientist, and the research enterprise, was central to both. Scientists need freedom to pursue their inquiries where they may lead. Neither Bush, in practice an electrical engineer, nor Merton, an academic social thinker, welcomed dictation to scientists. Bush and Merton reached their prime—in the 1940s—when both Germany and the Soviet Union viewed scientists as assets of the national government, resources to be exploited for the advancement of state power. Dictation to scientists was their norm.

Bush and Merton deplored this in equal measure. Both believed that science as an activity and occupation was incompatible with political dictation. The “ethos of science”—which Merton (writing in his 1938 essay, “Science and the Social Order,” in the Journal of Philosophy) defined as encompassing the “rules, prescriptions, mores, beliefs, values and presuppositions which are held to be binding upon the scientist”—was self-determinative. Whatever the norms of science, autonomy was its pulsing heart.

For fans of Bush, the appeal of pluralism—and of moving science beyond the preserve of elites, of democratizing science—ate away at his influence over the decades. Similarly, while Merton’s norms were often piously mouthed by scientists and their leaders, in reality the advent of “Big Science” and the pursuit by scientists since the 1970s of solutions to social, health, and environmental problems inevitably meant the politicalization of science, the normalization of trade-offs between the “purity” of scientific judgments and the realities of a complex nation. Today, Merton’s high-minded concept of the ethos of science is often honored in the breach.

Yet revisiting Merton will reward sincere efforts. Even in his idealized form, Merton’s structural understanding of science as a unique social system reminds us of the system’s fragility. Messing around with the funding, organization, and incentives of scientists, without much planning or forethought, threatens to derail the benefits of science to society and, likely, create Humpty Dumpty conditions where, having torn to pieces the fabric of our scientific community, weaving these pieces into a whole again will prove elusive, if not impossible.

Both Bush and Merton would say, in sad tones, we told you so.

G. Pascal Zachary

At this time of crisis, it is understandable that scientists—including social scientists—might romanticize the postwar system for science governance and express nostalgia for our recently passed good times. This is exactly what Natalie B. Aviles and Janet Vertesi offer, but it is not what we need now.

The authors laud Robert Merton’s norms of science conceptualized in the face of rising fascism before and during World War II and seen as a means to “shield scientific inquiry from ideological incursions and [the] destructive power of populism and the authoritarian state.” Unfortunately, this shield has not held during President Trump’s second administration.

While I would gladly return to the pre-Trump functioning of science, we should use this moment to contemplate the shortcomings of the structure of science bestowed upon us by Vannevar Bush and his colleagues and infused with a Mertonian ethos, understand how it contributed to our current moment, and consider how to make this structure more robust moving forward.

Bush justified a move in the postwar period to a relatively autonomous peer-review system for the establishment of scientific priorities and the allocation of federal funding based on the substantial contributions of federally funded academic scientists to US victory in World War II. However, I would suggest that these same successes and the insulation that resulted from the structure Bush promoted fueled an arrogance and obliviousness in the scientific community and contributed to the current public dissatisfaction with science.

Painting broadly, university scientists in the mid-twentieth century understood that their community had been substantially responsible for winning the war and thought they were entitled to government largesse with little oversight. In our generation, we have taken for granted federal funding and our autonomy and have felt little need to sincerely engage with citizens about science priorities and funding. Many of us have supported a deficit model of scientific understanding, believing that if the public simply “understood” science they would value it. We have been condescending. Are we surprised, then, that polling suggests limited public support for science and scientists?

As we move forward, we must contemplate how we can better balance democracy and expertise, build a non-condescending system for vigorous public engagement with science, and increase the transparency of science. If we are able to do this, we will be better positioned to resist a future authoritarian push.

Equally, we cannot uncritically extol the character of the pre-Trump system of peer review. It was and is a system in which respected high-status scientists could make minimally grounded claims about priorities, methods, and scientist trustworthiness, with limited pushback. Priorities, too, can be shaped by fashion not intrinsic virtues. While these qualities may be unavoidable in a human institution, we should use this moment to envisage how we might institutionalize mechanisms of reflection and means of supporting “undone” and underappreciated science.

In this effort, the thinking of Vannevar Bush and Robert Merton may play a role, but we must contemplate new ways of integrating and balancing democracy and expertise.

Daniel Lee Kleinman