In this chapter, I argue against the traditional STS motto of “from deficit to dialogue”. This motto has served to dichotomise experts’ framings of science-society relations, as those which reflect rationalistic impulses versus the (good ones) that embrace more horizontal two-way relationships with the public. Moreover, this motto reflects a narrative of progress—fromdeficit todialogue—in which the continued presence of deficit, as a marker of a previous stage, puzzles and is considered a bug. Against this background, I use my experience analysing expert opinions from the 2021 Chilean Strategy for Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (STKI) to show that alternative models to the “deficit vs. dialogue” are possible. Informed by Latin American Participatory Action Research theory and the philosophy of Humberto Giannini, I argue for a relational model marked by the hybridity of framings used by experts to negotiate multiple social relations. Under this model, expert framings can be explained by both cognitive and affective dimensions experienced in everyday life. Overall, I assert that the study of expert framings of science-society relations can be seriously invigorated once we see past our self-imposed binaries.