The authors of the article analyze the materials of one of the most famous public polemics of the Soviet period. The purpose is to identify factors affecting the specifics of the presentation of a scientific idea in the media; mechanisms for the formation of broadcast meanings depending on the status and communicative attitudes of participants in scientific polemics, a description of the object and markers of objections of various types and forms. The empirical basis of the research is publications in the media of the 1950–1980s. The empirical base was created in accordance with the principle of representative sampling. The methodological foundations of the analytical approach were developed by our predecessors when formatting the cognitive approach to the study of the communicative interaction of speech subjects. When creating the analytical algorithm, modern methods of intentional-stylistic analysis of the media text were used. The main conclusion: the communicative trajectory of the promotion of a scientific idea depends not only on the addressee factor, the information channel, but also on the features of the global communicative situation, the status characteristics of the subject of speech, his communicative attitudes. At different stages of scientific controversy in the public communicative space, the volume of scientific knowledge presented in the process of its popularization changes. The results of scientific research, the results of the work of specialized expert commissions, historical analogies, precedent information about similar projects are introduced into public communication. The administrative capabilities of the subject of speech provoke the use of tricks instead of verbalized versions of the objection, changing the object of criticism. The motivational part of the communicative trajectory is represented not only by calls to suspend the project embodying the scientific idea under discussion, but, crucially, by alternative ideas that stimulate scientific search in a certain area. The potential of the media material selected for analysis provides untapped opportunities to study the process of socialization of scientific knowledge, the deployment of public polemics as a means of neutralizing anti-scientific administrative decisions.