This introductory chapter establishes the central problem and argumentative framework for the book. It addresses the question of how science should be integrated into democratic decision-making, arguing that the traditional Weberian division of labor between facts and values is insufficient for navigating the contemporary tension between populism and technocracy. The chapter frames the core issue as a conflict between the Enlightenment ideal of citizen autonomy and the modern reality of epistemic dependence on specialized experts. This reframes the problem from one of knowledge transmission to a fundamental question of scientific authority. The book’s approach is grounded in a Kantian constructivist account of reason, proposing the central thesis that any legitimate scientific authority must be rooted in principles of autonomy and public reason. To develop this thesis, the introduction presents the book’s critical project: a systematic analysis of the three dominant solutions—the trust model, the epistemic authority model, and the democratic authority model. It argues that while each offers valuable insights, they are individually insufficient. The introduction concludes by identifying hyper-specialization as the crucial, unaddressed challenge for all three models and outlines the structure of the book, which aims to provide a novel synthesis to resolve this problem.