There is only so much "dumbing down" you can do to scientific research about topics until you lose all contextual nuance or become too long winded for a layperson to understand without being overloaded with information.

Then there is the issue with secondary and tertiary sources using simple language that causes confusion because it lacks the contextual nuance necessary to convey the correct interpretation.

Agreed. There's definitely a gap in how conclusions are communicated to the public.

It's crazy to me that so much of the general public don't understand that science is just a protocol of observing, recording, testing, and analyzing results.

True but the public is also being willfully ignorant