People often see science as a world apart: cool, rational and untouched by persuasion or performance. In this view, scientists simply discover truth, and truth speaks for itself.

But history tells a different story. Scientific theories do not simply reveal themselves; they compete for attention, credibility and uptake. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once suggested that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” a line that helped popularize the metaphor of a “marketplace of ideas.”

In this view, science is not outside the market, but inside a public arena where claims vie for audiences, resources and belief – and where power, persuasion and social position shape which ideas are heard, trusted or forgotten.

As a marketing scholar trained in economic sociology, I study how institutions that are supposedly above or apart from market logics – such as science, religion, medicine and education – use marketing tools to sustain credibility and build or keep moral authority.

When I tell people that one of the areas I study is the marketing of science, they are often surprised at the concept. Yet persuasion is an integral part of the scientific process.

From Isaac Newton’s followers and their coffeehouse demonstrations of physics wonders to today’s TED Talks and TikTok........

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