The article deals with the problem of combining scientific rigor and political relevance in contemporary research. On the one hand, scientists have openly proclaimed the complementarity of these elements of scientific activity since the second half of the XX century. On the other hand, the implementation of complementarity turns out to be difficult, which is associated with the difference in research objectives in both cases. The author gives the examples from political science and demonstrates particular acuteness of this problem, since the political turns out to be both an object of research and a subject of interaction. The leaders of political science justify the need to combine political relevance and scientific rigor with the fact that otherwise science turns out to be incapable of either predicting or contributing to overcoming socio-political crises. The article demonstrates that this problem has a long history, but it is gaining special importance nowadays. In the so-called post-normal era, the transformation of the image of science and real practices of scientific research turns out to be relevant. The need for transformation is due to the crises of our time, which require science to be included in the solution of pressing socio-political problems. The possibility of transformation in an epistemological sense is rooted in rethinking the status of a problem situation in scientific research.