Hey there, Caeli.

This topic of yours, is to me, one of the most fascinating and frustrating. While I do believe that there is a lot of actual scientific illiteracy, contemporary research has been challenging many of our previous misconceptions within science communication in many counter-intuitive ways. For example, when we look at issues such as anti-vaccination, climate change denial, and so on, research shows that such notions are often held by educated and intelligent people. Such findings contrast the scientifically-illiterate stereotype.

We are finding that factors such as beliefs and values are immensely important -- sometimes more important than facts themselves. Consider how difficult it is to convince someone of something if those facts are contrary to a worldview or social circle belief. Accepting some facts can cause social isolation and alienation.

Really, education is important for deeper understanding, but basic science literacy isn't so difficult to grasp. Often it's a strong start to just teach some basic research skills and inspire enough interest to use those skills. People can always go deeper into knowledge, but we don't all need to spend years in every subject to grasp the most relevant information for our personal lives or to get a reasonable sense for differentiating accurate information.

PNAS has a good intro with their collection of free literature on science communication: 1 2

Check out Dan Kahan et al. as well. His work shook some of my preconceived notions.