The four Mertonian norms (often abbreviated as the CUDO-norms) can be summarised as: • communism: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm. • universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants. • disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for specific outcomes or the resulting personal gain of individuals within them. • organized skepticism: scientific claims should be exposed to
critical scrutiny before being accepted: both in methodology and institutional codes of conduct.
Communism (communality) Communism in science requires a strong opposition to the commodification of scientific research to serve capitalistic interests. Instead, it advocates for commonly owned scientific knowledge. Common ownership of scientific goods is integral to science: "a scientists' claim to 'his' intellectual 'property' is limited to that of recognition and esteem". The substantive findings of science are a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community. They are a common heritage in which the equity of the individual producer is severely limited... rather than exclusive ownership of the discoverer and their heirs. Communism is used sometimes in quotation marks, yet elsewhere scientific products are described without them as
communized. Merton states the "communism of the scientific ethos" is flatly incompatible with "the definition of technology as 'private property' in a capitalistic economy", noting the claimed right of an inventor to withhold information from the public as demonstrated in the case of the
U.S. v. American Bell Telephone Co. A corollary to the need for common ownership of scientific knowledge is the imperative for "full and open" communication, which he saw in
J. D. Bernal's 1939 book
The Social Function of Science, as opposed to secrecy, which he saw espoused in the work of
Henry Cavendish, "selfish and anti-social".
Universalism The two aspects of Merton's universalism are expressed in the statements that "
objectivity precludes
particularism" and "free access to scientific pursuits is a functional imperative". Firstly, all scientists' claims ("truth-claims") should be subjected to the same "pre-established impersonal criteria" regardless of their source ("personal or social attributes of their protagonist"), i.e. regardless of race, nationality, culture, or gender. He saw universalism as "rooted deep in the impersonal character of science", and yet also saw the institution of science itself as part of a larger social structure which, paradoxically, was "not always integrated" into the societal structure. This could cause friction and be detrimental to the scientific project: Particularly in times of international conflict, when the dominant definition of the situation is such as to emphasize national loyalties, the man of science is subjected to conflicting imperatives of scientific universalism and
ethnocentric particularism. Secondly, to restrict scientific careers for any reason other than incompetence was to "prejudice the furtherance of knowledge". Merton again noted how the ethos of science may be inconsistent with that of society, but insists that "however inadequately it may be put into practice, the ethos of democracy includes universalism as a dominant guiding principle". He predicted that this inadequacy of
laissez-faire democratic processes would lead ultimately to false differential accumulation and increasing regulation of science under political authority, which must be counteracted through "new technical forms of organization" towards
equality of opportunity.
Disinterestedness Distinct from
altruism, scientists should act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise rather than for specific outcomes. Merton reasoned that an individual's scientific motivation may be easily influenced and without institutional enforcement of disinterestedness, and the "seeming virtual absence of fraud" could not be explained by unusually high moral integrity of individuals alone. Merton observed a low rate of fraud in science ("virtual absence … which appears exceptional"), which he believed stemmed from the intrinsic need for "verifiability" in science and
expert scrutiny by peers ("rigorous policing, to a degree perhaps unparalleled in any other field of activity") as well as the "public and testable character" of science. Self-interest (in the form of self-aggrandisement and/or exploitation of "the credulity, ignorance, and dependence of the layman") is the logical opposite of disinterestedness and may be appropriated by authority "for interested purposes." Merton points to "totalitarian spokesmen on race or economy or history" as examples and describes science as enabling such "new mysticisms" that "borrow prestige."
Organized skepticism Skepticism (i.e. "temporary suspension of judgement", and 'detached'
critical scrutiny) is central to both scientific methodology and institutions. The scientific investigator does not preserve the cleavage between the sacred and the profane, between that which requires uncritical respect and that which can be objectively analyzed. Merton suggested that this characteristic of science, and the "diffuse, frequently vague apprehension [of threat] to the current distribution of power" that skepticism presents, rather than from any specific conflicts "which appear to invalidate particular dogmas of church, economy, or state". Conflict becomes accentuated whenever science extends its research to new areas toward which there are institutionalized attitudes or whenever other institutions extend their control over science. In modern totalitarian society, anti-rationalism and the centralization of institutional control both serve to limit the scope provided for scientific activity. --> ==Later variants==