For the past couple years, I’ve been working as a science communicator on two fronts, as a freelance science writer and a community college Earth science instructor, reports Scott Johnson for Scientific American. I’ve seen, from many angles, the difficulty people have understanding and assessing scientific issues. With topics that are publicly contentious, those difficulties rarely arise from a simple lack of understanding. Other things get in the way. A student once said to me, “Well, I’m a conservative, so I don’t believe in climate change.” The frankness of that statement opens up a window into the obstacles science faces in the public sphere…