Part of the problem is that you have to "Read Like Math" and not "Read Like A Novel." Papers aren't taken seriously unless they sound serious, and people like to read adventure stories. Anything else is just "too hard."

People don't know how to read scientific papers. They don't know how to find the story in the stilted and stultifying prose. They don't know that you can skim bits and return to them later, you can read through to get the sense, then return to see the details.

And it's got scary looking equations.