e usually unprepared and uninterested in discussing them. As the meta-methodological turn in the philosophy of science has shown , scientific research is only possible within methodological packages; that is, scientists do research on the basis of assumptions about what kinds of things exist (i.e., on the ontological status of the objects of enquiry) and how knowledge about them is possible (i.e., on the epistemological status of claims about the world). There is also the apparent fact that certain commitments are bound up in scientific practice, such as a commitment to establishing an open discourse on theories and to diligence in evaluating all claims. As Popper discussed, there is an affinity between the ideals of scientific enquiry and those of a liberal democracy. This doesn’t mean that such commitments cannot ultimately be justified with reference to their efficiency in truth-seeking, but the process by which scientists are socialised into their disciplines leads most to hold commitments as moral obligations rather than only as means to ends.
Oddly enough, many advocates of scientism I encounter still operate from the view that science either does or should proceed through naive falsificationism. This speaks volumes about their philosophical literacy, but also about the extent to which such people are actually themselves engaged in any form of scientific practice.
Nevertheless, there is a strong argument to be made that scientists do not have to think about their own philosophical assumptions – or at least not in the natural sciences  – because at a meta level, their methodological packages will emerge, transform, and be selected-for based entirely on how much empirical or cognitive traction they bring in studying the world. In other words, while philosophers of science may be interested in the metaphysics and epistemology of science, these interests bring no value-added to the actual process and progress of science. Hence the dreadful refrain, ‘philosophy has had two thousand years to progress, and I defy you to name a single major discovery in philosophy in the last two decades’. Or something along those lines.
This is simply false, as a survey of journals in such fields as cognitive science, computer science, biology, and physics shows active engagement by scientists with these assumptions and also, often, collaboration with scholars whose disciplinary background lies in philosophy. 
But also, and perhaps most importantly, it proceeds from a misunderstanding of what philosophy is for – indeed, what knowledge is for. This is the third problem. Philosophers are not in the business of progressively accumulating facts about the natural world. Rather, philosophers are in the business of developing sophisticated and critical instruments for analysing concepts and methods. Moral philosophy, for example, grapples with many of the same problems that it has for millennia because these problems are not solvable in any simple sense. Instead, philosophers have accumulated bodies of scholarship that allow us to explore the problems, complexities, and implications of our ethical stances, developing methods for interrogating our and others’ views, and in some cases putting the nail in the coffin on views that once had currency but are now known to be terrible, or for demolishing popular but philosophically bankrupt ideologies.
We need ideology. We need morality. We cannot go about our lives without some idea, even if often implicit, of what the good life is and how society should be organised – what sort of deeds should be subject to sanction, how violence should be used, and so on. And while empirical input from the sciences is incredibly useful for resolving questions about these sorts of things, ultimately, empirical input only helps us undermine empirical premises or instruct us on efficient means to ends. What ends we choose and how we go about conceiving of them and their validity as such is not, in the end, amenable to empirical confirmation and disconfirmation.
Does scientism therefore have absolutely no leg to stand on