The primary object­ives of sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion entail con­vey­ing import­ant research find­ings to the pub­lic, enga­ging the audi­ence in sci­entif­ic top­ics, and pro­mot­ing aware­ness about sci­ence-related sub­jects. Cent­ral to sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion is the Pla­ton­ic concept of epi­steme, refer­ring to object­ive facts and know­ledge and to a sci­entif­ic sys­tem that gen­er­ally seems to eschew rhet­or­ic (Daston and Gal­is­on). At the same time, it is almost a tru­ism, espe­cially in the rhet­or­ic­al world, that know­ledge pro­duc­tion is shaped by rhet­or­ic. The key find­ings of the rhet­or­ic of sci­ence were made nearly four dec­ades ago and since then a pleth­ora of stud­ies have shown exactly how rhet­or­ic shapes what know­ledge pre­vails in aca­demia (cf. e.g. Fahne­stock; Gross; Prelli; Cec­carelli). How­ever, a prob­lem arises when sci­entif­ic know­ledge is com­mu­nic­ated bey­ond dis­cip­lin­ary and aca­dem­ic bor­ders: to serve the goal of pub­lic engage­ment and build trust with non-experts (Hendriks, Kien­hues, Bromm ), sci­entif­ic know­ledge is in need of rhet­or­ic­al recon­tex­tu­al­iz­a­tion (Gott­schling and Kramer). But in a para­dox­ic­al con­sequence, the rhet­or­ic­al ground­ing of sci­entif­ic facts is mostly dis­guised for a semb­lance of capital‑T Truth. Under scru­tiny from politi­cians, pop­u­lists and skep­tics, sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion tends to revert to the self-asser­tion that there is no altern­at­ive to sci­entif­ic facts (March for Sci­ence Ber­lin) and that what is to be done is simply “listen to the sci­ence” (Sen­ate Hear­ing Greta Thun­berg). Doing so, sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion reduces extra-sci­entif­ic dis­course to doxa (Amossy) or even renders it as pub­lic opin­ion patho­logy (Sch­eufele). Resem­bling a dis­sim­u­la­tio artis, these rhet­or­ic­al oper­a­tions elev­ate the epi­steme in sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion above oth­er modes of know­ledge pro­duc­tion that can be seen as arbit­rar­ily delib­er­at­ive and there­fore not so much con­cerned with sci­entif­ic Truth. Our pan­el asks about the con­sequences and rem­ed­ies of sci­entif­ic dis­sim­u­la­tio: How can sci­ence com­mu­nic­a­tion do justice to both the fac­tu­al con­tent of sci­entif­ic know­ledge pro­duc­tion and the rhet­or­ic­al char­ac­ter of sci­entif­ic and pub­lic discourse?