Well, I put it more politely than that, but it's a longstanding nagging issue for me, so I tend to get worked up when talking about it.

I think your point is a very valid one. I guess when I try to read a paper that's "way over my head" academically, it's fair that the authors don't care about me.

But I don't think they know its tradeoff. The way I know this is by reading the majority of intro / mid level textbooks I've had to deal with as a freshman. At that point you're not nearly a domain expert, but the texts are written in the same way.