近年美國的國際關係學界興起了一股評價自身學門研究成果的風氣，這股風潮主要始於一九九七年《美國政治科學論叢》第九十一卷、第四期上出版了一系列主流現實主義者們與John A. Vasquez針對現實主義典範是進步還是退化的辯論文章，國內學界亦有陳宏銘（2003）在《東吳政治學報》對此詳細討論。然而本文將從科學哲學的角度出發，主張多數國際關係學者由於缺乏科學哲學的深刻理解，因此當他們試著應用Lakatos的「科學研究綱領方法論」（MSRPs）來對其他作品進行批判或辯護時，往往誤解或誤用Lakatos的論點而使得知識上的「真正辯論」未曾發生。 本文提出的論點依序如下：首先，我們認為Lakatos的「科學研究綱領方法論」要旨在重建科學活動的理性基礎，以「取代」的概念替代「否證」。其次，「取代」的概念暗示著不存在客觀規則可以超越時空來判斷一個研究綱領是進步還是退化，而科學史家的重建科學理性的責任主要在「敘述」而非「指導」。第三，「不可共量」（incommensurable）並不等於「不可比較」（incomparable），典範之間的不可比較不是來自於它們各自有不同的「硬核」，而是因為它們的擁護者缺乏背景知識上的共識。第四，沒有讀出前述Lakatos在科學哲學上的宏觀立場，導致許多國際關係學者很仔細地誤用「科學研究綱領方法論」去比較國關領域中彼此競爭的理論，但卻絲毫沒有意識到Lakatos對於身為科學史家的角色認知。最後，國際關係學者誤用「科學研究綱領方法論」的結果，是賦予其在指導科學發展上過多的期待，不但抵觸了Lakatos提倡方法論多元主義的原意，又重蹈了認識論一元論的泥沼，這些現象都與促使科學進步的目的背道而馳。

Starting with the debate between Vasquez and several realists in the American Political Science Review in 1997, it has been a fashion recently among American scholars of international relations to evaluate the achievement of scientific research in the whole field. Applying Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programs (MSRPs), the main theme of this debate is whether the realist paradigm should be viewed as progressive or degenerate. Some Taiwanese scholars have also examined this debate, such as Chen’s (2003) article in Soochow Journal of Political Science. Nevertheless, this paper will propose an argument based on the philosophy of science to assert that the above literature has not yet engaged in a real debate based on Lakatos’s MSRPs. Lacking a comprehensive understanding of Lakatos’s argumentative rationale, most of the participants in this “debate” misused MSRPs when they tried to criticize or defend other participants’ works. The argument is proposed as follows. First, the main gist of Lakatos’s MSRPs is to reconstruct the rational basis of scientific development with the concept of replacement instead of falsification. Second, the concept of replacement suggests that there is no objective criterion which can transcend the spatiotemporal limit to judge whether a research program is progressive or degenerate, and that the task of historians of science to reconstruct scientific rationality is descriptive, not prescriptive. Third, “incommensurability” is not identical to “incomparability”: different paradigms are incomparable not because they have different “hard cores” but because their proponents cannot reach a consensus on background knowledge. Fourth, many international relations scholars failed to grasp Lakatos’s overall standpoint toward the philosophy of science; they therefore misused MSRPs to compare different competing international relations theories in a narrow way, disregarding Lakatos's perspective as a historian of science. Finally, the result of international relations scholars’ misuse of MSRPs is overestimating its importance in guiding scientific development. This result not only contradicts the spirit of methodological pluralism upheld by Lakatos, but also repeats the mistake of epistemological monism; consequently, these efforts will only hinder scientific progress.