Open Science and Closed Science: Tradeoffs in a Democracy

In 1942, when Robert Merton published his classic essay on the norms of science, the shadow of war extended across the world. The threat of fascismand its concomitant commitment to state ideology-appeared the antithesis of free and open scientific inquiry. Science, like nature, could not be shackled to a political system; instead, science served a higher rationality to which properly socialized scientists paid homage by contributing to the extension of certified knowledge. Merton argued that a set of identifiable norms prescribed behavior that is both functional for the advance of knowledge and morally binding on the professional scientist.' But, to this day, the status of the norms as descriptive of scientific practice or, alternatively, as an ideal at best tacitly transmitted and seldom enforced, remains unclear.2 No such ambiguity, however, surrounds the values that Merton (and later Bernard Barber) posited as underlying the institution of science. If universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism were the prerequisites for the production of objective knowledge in Merton's scheme, then a liberal-democratic society was the obvious environment in which science flourished.3 The concordance of values in the external culture and the norms operative within the internal social system of science was assumed. This axiom has had a significant effect on how social scientists and policy analysts have investigated science. It has, by and large, resulted in an analytical focus on relations within the scientific community and not on influences from without. Such emphasis is tantamount to declaring the autonomous social system of science closed to intrusions of lesser rationality and nonscientific actors. The democracy that guaranteed free inquiry among credentialed scientists precluded the need for such intercourse with other social institutions. When such intercourse did occur, the congruence among basic political values and science rendered the latter nonproblematic.4 Democracy, of course, is problematic. So, too, is Merton's formulation of its meliorative role vis-a-vis science. Nevertheless, we can use his interpretation as a plausible theoretical framework for discussing the openness of science, and thereby help to clarify the empirical status of the norms. The norm communism, for example, speaks directly to the communal character of scientific knowledge. Unlike those interested in the accumulation of property, scientists are said to earn profits-in the form of recognition, prestige, and research opportunities-as they share their intellectual property by publishing in scientific journals. Communication allows research findings to be scrutinized by those who will eventually deem or deny it to be reliable knowledge. For Merton, in 1942, open communication was an imperative for scientific integrity. For science in 1985, secrecy is a negotiable behavior-an article of faith for some, a deplorable condition for others. What has changed in these 40 years in scientific precept and practice? And how does the democracy that Merton postulated as supportive (and therefore analytically unproblematic) function as an arbiter of scientific openness and secrecy? Professor Chubin is Director of the Technology and Science Policy Program, School of Social Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332. This paper was prepared for the AAAS Project, with support from National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, under NSF grant RII-8309874.