You've hit the nail on the head but i think in a different way than you originally thought. The thing is, this paper isn't necessarily meant for the general public. One of the worst parts of the scientific literature in its present state is that it's written for other scientists, who already know the jargon and who are familiar with the field. Scientific writing just isn't meant to be easily digestible anymore, especially by people without training in it. This is a major flaw in scientific publishing though because it makes science much more inaccessible and creates the information vacuums that others have mentioned.