Science doesn't really fund itself and "the public" is regularly questioning the expenses for it. The best example of what is wrong with this is the communication about Human made Global Warming and how it's possible that there are still people which deny it. Or take more crude examples like Vaccination skeptics or flat earthers. Results and methods are rarely published in understandable language.

Actually the Funding for studying the Higgs Boson famously got secured by making a really simple explanation.

Obviously Loeb might have gone a bit over the top given the odds of his theory but as you mention if reaching out to the public was more common nobody might have blinked an eye.