These days the language of science in popular media always remind me of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World with science as a candle in the dark and while corpora analysis is cool to create a bunch of word stats I believe modern science (supported by the recent steady lack of change in its language as shown in one of the article graphs) has inherently a problem of discourse and not of words to be clearer to the layperson. Discourse in the storytelling sense that appeal to their specific audience, but also not like those flourish articles that start like a romance which are pretty preposterous. In that way, perhaps, dunno, it's impossible to have a language of science that is efficient today while at the same time trying to appeal to everybody as it would be impossible to have an universal discourse that appeals equally to a person on minimum wage and a trader with a nice suit... in the end any universal language of science no matter how well its words are selected will fail, due to bad discourse IMHO.
The truth is not enough. It needs promoting and needs to be fought for. But the best paid promoters and fighters can win regardless of how true anything is, allowing those with the power and money to select the truth that suits them. And rarely are scientists good fighters.