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The controversies that regularly surround public issues often bring in competing principles of legitimacy. Scientists are not an Olympian presence far above the normative battles being waged in society: they take part, and are even a leading resource, in the competition to define what is audible, credible and important. Sociological analysis of the way consensus is built up in the mainstream media in France suggests that, even though what scientists say in public is usually presented as neutral, it is not apolitical, because it stems from patterns of social logic that prompt them into serving certain views more than others. Scientists could therefore benefit from findings in the social sciences to gain a better grasp of relationships between science and society, in other words of the political significance of their participation in public debates.