If researchers don't advance public knowledge, who will?

• June 10, 2025
• shorts  
• research  

Here’s a thought: The set of “public knowledge” and the set of “human knowledge” are very different things: the first is a strict subset of the latter.

Researchers get paid to advance human knowledge. They do NOT paid to advance public knowledge.

So who advances “public knowledge”? Is it journalists? Educators? Should it be the burden of researchers?

Here’s another question: should all human knowledge be packaged in such a way that the public understands it? Is that a good use of time and resources? Does the average person actually need to be able to understand the newest developments in esoteric fields?

I think my views on academic language, jargon, and communication are continually evolving. This may be controversial, but right now I’m of the opinion that it’s actually ok for academic papers to be totally inaccessible for the vast majority of people. I have a much bigger issue with the fact that I have never explicitly been taught how to read academic literature.