Hi SITN. I have some feedback. Most scholars in science communication and in science studies have abandoned the deficit model; they no longer assume that the solution to science-society tensions is to simply distribute the facts. Unfortunately, that means science communication is complicated, and that interfacing with concerned citizens means understanding the particular factors in their distrust of the scientific project. Hope this isn't news to you. Nevertheless....

In some of your older Reddit posts, it is often suggested that some citizens are just resistant to "logic and reason." But successful science is not just logic and reason. These days it involves implicit value judgments about how we want to solve society's problems, about the appropriate significance thresholds (as shown by Rudner in the 50s), about how much risk we should take on when we confirm a hypothesis.

Anti-vaxxers, to take one example, have history that shows how "the facts" aren't enough. As recently as 2004, leaked transcripts from the Institute of Medicine (published in a poorly-argued Rolling Stone piece) revealed government-appointed experts disagreeing about how much risk is acceptable in declaring thimerosal safe. I don't personally disagree with their verdict---it's safe---but parents were frightened that the fact of safety was constructed out of a hidden debate, rather than found in nature. This distrust is as fundamental as any facts they may lack or misunderstand. And almost all science policy is produced in such a way!

The real challenge for communicating science is not to keep repeating facts, using simpler and accessible language. The challenge is to confront the implicit value judgments in science and open them up for discussion with the public. It means confronting the inevitable messiness that connects a journal article to a government dietary guideline or to a new treatment for depression or a new vaccine.

All that to say, if you want to polish your skills of communicating with the public you need to equip yourself with the right tools. "Logic and reason" or "the facts" are an outdated positivist pipedream. To convince people who aren't already on your side, you need to think about "trust", "values", and the disconnect between the average citizen and the world of regulatory science policy.