"We mortals do not understand you." That's the heartfelt cry from former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, pleading with scientists to use everyday language to help counter growing public mistrust.

She was giving one explanation of why scientists are struggling to get their message across to a sceptical public at a major conference in Vienna this week.

Delegates made time for soul-searching at the meeting in the Austrian capital, conceding that they bear part of the blame for alienating some people.

Just days after a historic March for Science in Washington, the experts owned up to failures including remoteness and condescension – and operating in an "echo chamber of likeminded people".

"I think it's the conceitedness, in a way," Heike Langenberg, the chief editor of the journal Nature Geoscience, admitted.

"The problem is that scientists have not spoken at an even level with people who are out there," she told AFP on the sidelines of a European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting of more than 14,000 experts in 22 fields. "They have tended to give long speeches and not listen … I think they have underestimated intelligence and overestimated knowledge."