The whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something "higher brow" and more complex than just a spammy blog.
> What is your profession?
Computer science.
> Oh? Is that a science?
Sure, it is the science of information processes and their interactions with the world.
> I’ll accept that what you do is technology; but not science. Science deals with fundamental laws of nature. Computers are manmade. Their principles come from other fields such as physics and electronics engineering.
...
It's true that most programmers do not do computer science but CS as a science does exist. CS is the study of data structures and algorithms. CS can be viewed as a branch of mathematics but it is much more process oriented than most math disciplines.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY
Code + Jupyter Notebook: https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014