Many recent changes have occurred in Taiwan's academic environment, for example, the establishment of an evaluation system and the use of SCI or SSCI as indices of scientific productivity. Some measures are considered controversial, yet they are already exerting significant impacts on social science research. Two attributes of social science knowledge that form viewpoints on the sociology of knowledge are discussed in this paper, with the main argument being that all social science knowledge is reflexive in essence, and any discourse of knowledge legitimacy can only be reconstructed when social science knowledge fulfills the requirements of openness and publicness. Finally, I argue that in order to narrow the gap between social science knowledge and the world we live in, we must improve our academic environment by increasing our appreciation of multiple, critical, and reflexive values in order to win the public trust.