 (4) This tight coherence implies that normal science is conservative and closed, in contrast to Popper’s science as an “open society” (Popper 1945). Contrary to tradition, said Kuhn, scientific rationality does not consist in advancing hypotheses and testing them severely. To challenge the constitutive pillars of a scientific field, as Popper and the positivists advocated, would destroy it, for all theories and conceptual frameworks face potentially falsifying anomalies at all times (Kuhn [1962] 1970a and 1970b; Lakatos 1970 agreed). Popper’s “critical rationalism”, the key to Popper’s Enlightenment conception of political democracy as well as scientific advance, is actually irrational; for such criticism would undercut the researchers’ reason for being.