The problem this paper addresses is that scientists have to take normatively charged decisions which can have a significant impact on individual members of the public or the public as a whole. And yet mechanisms to exercise democratic control over them are often absent. Given the normative nature of these choices, this is often perceived to be at odds with basic democratic principles. I show that this problem applies in similar ways to civil service institutions and draw on political philosophy literature on the civil service (e.g. Rosanvallon, 2011; Heath, 2022) to discuss when such normative judgements can nevertheless be said to be democratically legitimate. Concretely, I seek to show that normative judgements in research need not be democratically legitimated in order for science to be democratically legitimate. Indeed, it can be democratically legitimate for scientists to go against the expressed views of the public or political representatives if this is justified in light of, firstly, the role science has been asked to fulfil and, secondly, when it is in line with public institutions’ key principles. This is a counter-position to views currently held in the values in science debate (e.g. by Kitcher, 2011; Intemann, 2015; Schroeder, 2021; Lusk, 2021) which argue that value-laden judgements in science are legitimate if they are aligned with the public’s views or directly decided by public.

本文解决的问题是，科学家必须做出规范性的决定，这可能对公众个体或整个公众产生重大影响。然而，对它们实行民主控制的机制往往不存在。鉴于这些选择的规范性，这通常被认为与基本的民主原则相矛盾。我表明这个问题以类似的方式适用于公务员制度，并借鉴有关公务员制度的政治哲学文献（例如 Rosanvallon，2011；Heath，2022）来讨论何时可以说这种规范性判断在民主上是合法的。具体来说，我试图表明，为了使科学具有民主合法性，研究中的规范性判断不需要民主合法化。事实上，科学家反对公众或政治代表所表达的观点在民主上是合法的，如果这是合理的，首先是科学被要求履行的作用，其次是当它与公众一致时。机构的关键原则。这与目前科学辩论中价值观所持有的观点相反（例如Kitcher，2011；Intemann，2015；Schroeder，2021；Lusk，2021），这些观点认为科学中充满价值的判断如果一致的话就是合法的征求公众意见或由公众直接决定。