In the realm of technology, scientists are the idea guys. Lots of good ideas out there. But you need entrepreneurs and engineers and capital in order to see if it is something that will be useful to the public.
It may takes years of work, PhDs, and lots of research costs to get the findings (idea), but in the end ideas themselves are cheap.
The result is that scientists "polish" their results when communicating to the press, who again make sure that it "sounds good". In the end the public usually gets the truth only in so far as "could" means "there is a low but nonzero chance of this ever working, but only if there are massive engineering efforts and many more breakthroughs and economic and resource incentives line up right".
Putting scientists into the media game, instead of isolating them was a grave mistake. It even creates competition for gtants, based on how "flashy" the results are.