[alganet]

> the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory

The average person consumes science from news, not from scientists.

A lot of news outlets and "science communicators" have been repeatedly dumbing down scientific subjects for non-scientific purposes. Clickbait, ideology, lazyness.

The nature of dark matter should be presented to the public as it is. If we dumb it down too much, it's the same as not presenting it at all, or misrepresenting it.

[dotnet00]

I tend to agree about science communication, but on the other hand, I've also seen how frustrating it can be to constantly have to correct the same fallacious arguments over and over again because people misinterpret the ideas and have a bad case of Dunning-Kruger.

So presenting things as is doesn't really work because people still have only partial information relative to those who work in the field. Thus being the same in effect as misrepresentation.

I think I was too harsh in saying that it should be presented as absolute fact, ideally I'd rather the average person be much better educated in their understanding of the scientific process, such that they'd have enough humility to recognize that watching a documentary does not give them all the facts. But that doesn't seem realistic, so it's a difficult issue.

[alganet]

> I'd rather the average person be much better educated in their understanding of the scientific process

Yes! However, I don't know how realistic this is.