Part of the problem is bad PR. Its induced by 1: a terrible name, dark matter implies a lot. and 2: Pop science doing an utterly awful job of explaining the top

Part of the problem is bad PR. Its induced by 1: a terrible name, dark matter implies a lot. and 2: Pop science doing an utterly awful job of explaining the topic. Many people walk away with the assumption that dark matter is literally massive lumps of stuff out there that is just really hard to see. Kind of analogous to stealth aircraft or something. This sounds absurd and it is. And its why a common reaction is to consider it absurd and that we probably just have gravity wrong. The reality is that dark matter is just the name given to a set of observations. It wasn't intended to be descriptive. We are talking about scientists here, not public relations. So they are liable to fumble in the PR bit. Its not what they are good at. I consider the Neil DeGrasse Tysons and Michio Kakus of the world more to blame than the community at large. They have chosen to become the popular face of science and with that have a responsibility to properly communicate it. Their failure contributes to why people distrust academia to some degree.