> It’s too bad this couldn’t be briefly explained in the abstract by the researchers.

Where would you stop? It's a medical abstract that is full of terms and phrases that, for instance, my parents wouldn't understand. How long would this abstract be if aimed at a Grade 10 reading level?

I counted at least 15 medical, diagnostic or clinical trial terms that would need to be explained to the average person, but would be the correct and concise terminology for a practitioner in the field.

"Orthostatic symptoms and syncope", "severe autonomic dysfunction", "randomized, controlled, crossover fashion", "brachial blood pressure", "thoracic impedance", "blood flow velocity", "brachial artery", "middle cerebral artery", "presyncope", "supine mean blood pressure", "(P<0.01)", "stroke volume", "Cerebral blood flow regulation", "acute hemodynamic response", "cerebrovascular regulation"

On the one hand, I think you're right, it's more the job of science journalists to summarize scientific literature and communicate its significance based on research methods and potential impact.

At the same time, this goes wrong so often that you could make an argument for a 'plain English' summary of an article to help facilitate both journalists and the curious.

Presumably researchers explain their research to non-experts all the time, so this is not some unbelievable request.

I guess I kind of feel like we are barging into a conversation between scientists and doctors and demanding that they write down to our level because we are "curious" and someone linked to it from HN.

I would expect a journalist writing about this kind of article to actually be able to understand the abstract, at a minimum, or they shouldn't be writing about this.

I know I'd be annoyed if a bunch of doctors started reviewing my architecture documents and criticized me for not explaining s3 or etl or snowflake or redshift.

Some publishers do indeed try to provide a plain-language summary where possible. See Cochrane reviews, for example this one:

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

Where this required (package labeling on OTC medications, for example) the FDA requires that it be written at a fifth grade level.

OTOH the so-called “label” (package insert) is written for doctors and pharmacists.

I would hate it if I had to break out words like “page table”, “TLB”, “pointer swizzle”, etc when writing a paper. I have to assume the reader has some basic knowledge of the topic at hand else they are unlikely to understand what I’m talking about anyway.

You see this in the uproar over “Critical Race Theory” or a lot of the Covid misinformation sites: the basics are not misunderstood or ignored so the argument goes in strange and incomprehensible directions. The problem is deeper than a little vocabulary.

Leaflets meant for patients are to be written in lay language. Prescribing information meant for physicians aren’t. I would consider scientific literature to be the same as prescribing information as they are aimed at the scientific community and not the lay public. Science journalists perhaps are meant to fill the gap here.

Indeed but the origin of this thread was someone complaining that abstracts of technical papers aren’t written in language that anyone could understand.

The entire purpose of an abstract is for fellow experts in the field to grok the paper quickly, not for the general public to get a hand-wavy interpretation of jargon.

And quite frankly, absurd practicalities aside, there is a lot of harm in having every paper accessible to all. There’s a wide divide between papers that have been accepted to a venue vs. important theory that has been debated and accepted by a scientific community and is worth presenting to the general public. And, the general public certainly cannot tell the difference.

I had to look up 'highfalutin' to understand your comment on a general message board.