I used to be a lot more sanguine about popular science, but I’ve learned over time that the effect is that it often leads people to cement their misconceptions. Certain texts that specifically address misconceptions are the best, because they often inject nuance where it is sorely lacking, but hearing laypeople talk about Really Cool Physics (often at the bleeding edge of the field) with only a cursory understanding of what is often a translation from math to English is a bizarre experience. And it really is accompanied by the sort of excessive reductionism criticized in the OP. I think over the last ten years the public’s appreciation for science has grown, but their understanding has not expanded to keep pace.
Often scientists take great pains to be conservative in their professional estimations, but people latch onto work they barely understand that they feel confirms their preconceptions regardless of how nuanced a paper or study may be. I highly recommend watching Potholer54 on YouTube to see how frequently major media organization misinterpret studies on global warming to the point where they sometimes state the exact opposite finding from what the study reports.
I think that social sciences have lost a lot of their prestige because they’re muddier and people have a harder time using them as a means to an end in discussions, because they’re rarely sufficiently definitive to serve as means to political and social ends. But even then, the clearer a finding is, the more likely it’s going to receive media attention if it addresses one of the three Ps: Politics, Private Parts, and Pointless shit. The last category is stuff that people argue endlessly about: “This study shows why toilet paper rolls have to face this way!” We don’t care if a linguist came up with a new idea about the formation of dark Ls in English. The social science ideas that receive the most attention are the ones that prove people with different skin colors do X differently. Then you’ll get it in the ear for about a week from everyone who half read it on Facebook that everything we know about race is wrong or right- depending on the bias. The physical sciences have the benefit of offering less than can be argued about: “Gene found responsible for anger is more likely to appear in X racial group.” The narrative writes itself, and you don’t usually have a conflicting study, even if the narrative is hopelessly reductionist.
