In the present paper, I argue that, contrary to the standard critique, the Lakatosian conception of rational reconstructions is far from aiming at rigging the historical record and at turning history of science into parody. On the contrary, it can be a fruitful notion which creates an intermediate logical space between eliminative (or scientific) naturalism and aprioristic philosophy with regard to the philosophical comprehension of scientific change. However, I also argue that in order to be so it needs to be explicated and revised in the light of the examination of Lakatos’s attitude against naturalism. In particular, my argumentation is developed in three steps. First, I claim that the main reason for rejecting the criticism against the Lakatosian notion of ‘rational reconstruction’ is that forging the historical record would ruin the role of rational reconstructions as an arbiter for the assessment of rival philosophical theories of rationality. Second, I argue that we have to distinguish between the use of the term in the historiography of science and the use in the philosophy of science. I also suggest that we have to distinguish between the notion of ‘rational reconstruction’ and the notion of ‘normative explanation,’ and that we should employ the latter when it comes to historiography. Finally, I argue that Lakatos’s appeal to an alleged (Popperian or Fregean) third world of standards of rationality leads his view into incoherence. I propose a way to avoid incoherence by (a) abolishing the third-word metaphor and (b) replacing the inter-methodology, quasi-empirical process of assessment between rival theories of scientific rationality with an intra-methodology conception of the evaluation process.