by The Mertonian norms are universalism, communism, disinterestedness and organized skepticism. These Mertonian norms help us understand how science is done because they all are norms that would only work in an ideal setting but are a set of ideas that people should strive for. There are limitations because the world is not perfect and these norms do not account for the imperfections.
Universalism allows anyone regardless of class, race, nationality, culture or gender to contribute to science. This is the hope of universalism but in reality there is a bias and not everyone is allowed to contribute because there is a national bias. Even though science is universal everyone has a different loyalty, to their home country or their company, and that created a divide that hurts universalism. The limitation to universalism is that it does not take into account the real world divide that will cause people to not be able to be included.
Communalism is the common ownership of scientific knowledge, where no one can claim the specific ownership of knowledge. Once it has been published every reader can then possess this knowledge. Ideally this means that everyone has the same access to all the same knowledge but this is not true. There is secrecy in science and patents that makes things private property and this contradicts the idea of communalism. There is also a clear gap in who has access to what knowledge.
Disinterestedness is the idea that scientists are supposed to be led by passion for knowing more and act for the betterment of the community and not for personal gain. The downfall here is clear that humans are naturally self oriented and therefore usually act in ways that will lead to personal gain.
Organized skepticism allows for other scientists to question the claims that are brought forward into the scientific community. This is a very important methodological and institutional mandate. It helps keep ideas from being accepted before there is enough evidence to confirm them. There is collective and critical scrutiny that needs to be performed on every idea before it is accepted. This can be in the forms of peer review and the duplication of experiments. There has been criticism to this idea that it is not an idea unique to science and is active in other domains of human activities.
All of these norms help us understand how science is done and hold scientists accountable to a certain set of idealistic norms. The limitation is that these norms are indeed idealistic and are rather difficult to see completed in the real world where other factors play a role.