Academics, yes. Like from the upper years of the PhD process onwards, to postdocs and professorship, yes. But during the bachelor's and master's, we had essentially zero idea what professors did outside lecturing. Didn't even realize a thing called "PhD student" exists. Just that TAs exist. Didn't know what a scientific publication or journal is. I did end up learning about it when I got a student assistant job at a chair, and interacted with the PhD students.

Even then, I didn't quite understand what peer review was, other than a vague idea of being some kind of expert stamp of approval that it is real science and not woowoo. Didn't know what a citation was or why it mattered. The whole "knowledge production" system is fully opaque. And this was the view inside the university as a student. Now imagine people who don't attend university. To them science is not much more than some mad scientist Einstein trope and that's it. And that it has something to do with NASA and stuff.