> the whole point is to be well ahead of what most people can understand
That’s not the case at all. Being at the leading edge of research should mean that you are creating new knowledge. That doesn’t imply that people cannot understand it. This expectation that laypeople cannot possibly understand science is one of the reasons so many papers are written so densely and obtusely. “They” can’t understand it anyway, right?
Feynman said if he couldn’t explain it to freshmen he didn’t understand it himself.
I think a lot of cutting-edge work is also done at the edge of understanding, and that's fine. It can be hard enough to explain groundbreaking work to experts with deep context; it's reasonable to me that it takes more time and work to find the explanations that make sense to the average person.
I do agree that researchers should be able to give decent "here's what I do" explanations to the general public. But that's very different than a member of the general public understanding the context well enough that they can judge the value of the work to the field.
That’s not the case at all. Being at the leading edge of research should mean that you are creating new knowledge. That doesn’t imply that people cannot understand it. This expectation that laypeople cannot possibly understand science is one of the reasons so many papers are written so densely and obtusely. “They” can’t understand it anyway, right?
Feynman said if he couldn’t explain it to freshmen he didn’t understand it himself.