 Secondly, that restricting scientific careers on anything but lack of competence was to "prejudice the furtherance of knowledge".Merton again noted how the ethos of science may be inconsistent with a society's, and "however inadequately it may be put into practice, the ethos of democracy includes universalism as a dominant guiding principle".He described this inadequacy of laissez-faire democratic processes as leading ultimately to false differential accumulation and as such, to increasing regulation of science under political authority which must be counteracted through "new technical forms of organization" towards equality of opportunity.