Yet, all things considered, I remain sympathetic to Merton’s [77, p. 276] view that there exists
‘a distinctive pattern of institutional control of a wide range of motives which characterizes the
behavior of scientists’ and I am happy to live with the ‘noble fiction’ – Plato’s idea of the useful lie
– since the alternative to accepting that there are commonly held imperatives which guide the
actions of scientists and scholars is rampant relativism and, ultimately, epistemological anarchy.

最后一行is的主语是哪一个？