It's not only a general public problem. (Score 1)

It is not only a problem of Scientists communicating with the general public. Most scientists have trouble communicating among themselves. Those of us in academia fall prey to the fact that, even between related subjects, our technical lingo is so, uhm, technical, that we cannot convey concepts to our peers. Not to mention that many scientists are horrible public speakers. This is doubly sad because scientific communication in the form of conferences is held with high regard; but when you go to one, even many keynote talks usually given by big names in a field are utterly made uninteresting by lack of rethorical skills. Scientists cannot be isolated in a concrete room and have PRs doing the contacts for them. It's not how it works, even inside the scientific community. But communication skills are hugely undertrained and thus we will never be able to avoid the 'social inept' tag in the near future.