[pitt1980]

all scientist were non-scientists first though, correct?

Look, I get that there's some natural professional context and lingo that goes into these things, but for all the angst that goes into what esteem that population at large holds up the science community

making their work more accessible to both novices and interested outsiders would be a nice step in the right direction

[danielalmeida]

I agree with you. To put it simply, papers are optimized for the scientific community and making them "more accessible" to outsiders has a cost. I'd settle for better writing and presentations within the scientific community for now. If you ever find researchers that blog about their research in simple terms, I think it's safe to assume they're using their personal time to do that (I know of very few; Andy Ko [1] comes to mind).

[1] https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior

[rifung]

I think that they often do when it's appropriate, but the way they make them more accessible isn't by changing their papers but by giving talks or presentations that are less technical (like TED talks for example).

This seems like a good approach in my humble opinion.