Strevens (2003) reinterprets Merton's 'Arago effect' — priority awarded no matter how thin the margin — as functionally rational, against Merton's own verdict that it is a dysfunctional pathology

philosophy-of-sciencepriority-rulemichael-strevensrobert-mertonarago-effectsociology-of-sciencecredit-assignment

Robert Merton, who established priority as an object of sociological study, held that the Arago effect — priority awarded no matter how thin the margin (Merton's example: a Galileo–Simon Mayr dispute turning on ten days) — was "a dysfunctional extreme far beyond the limits of utility" (Merton's words as relayed by Strevens). The name comes from François Arago, permanent secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, whom Merton quotes: "Questions as to priority may depend on weeks, on days, on hours, on minutes."

Strevens argues the opposite. Within his economic model, discriminating a winner from a loser even in an extremely close race still shifts labor toward higher-potential programs, so the effect carries genuine functional significance rather than being mere pathology: "Aragoism will therefore affect the distribution of labor among competing research programs" (the continuation "...and so will, contrary to Merton's claim, have real functional significance" was initially carried as [unverified-quote] because of PDF line-wrap hyphenation; the 2026-09-08 audit confirmed it verbatim as one unbroken sentence against a direct re-fetch — see frontmatter). Strevens is careful that this does not show the strict (Aragoiste) version superior to a more forgiving one that declares near-ties a draw — only that it is not correctly dismissed as functionless.

This is a distinct angle from Merton's account of priority disputes as norm-enforcement: Strevens sets out to improve on the Mertonian account with a rival economic explanation rather than a normative one, and here reverses one of Merton's specific empirical verdicts. It extends the vault's credit-assignment cluster and sits beside priority adjudication as documentary source criticism.