It works astoundingly well with poorly written technical manuals. Looking at you, CMake reference manual O_O. It also helps translate unix man pages from Neckbeardese into clean and modern speech.
With science papers it's a bit more work. You must copy section by section into GPT4, despite the increased token limit.
But sure. Here's how it can work:
1. Copy relevant sections of the paper
2. As questions about the jargon:
"Explain ____ like I'm 5. What is ____ useful for? Why do we even need it?"
"Ah, now I understand _____. But I'm still confused about _____. Why do you mean when you say _____?"
"I'm starting to get it. One final question. What does it mean when ______?"
"I am now enlightened. Please lay down a sick beat and perform the Understanding Dance with me. Dances"
This actually works surprisingly well.