Comment by guy_named_matt

but.... why is that? if scientific papers were written well (and i'm implicating the science publishing guidelines + accepted culture of scientific writing in that, not just individual authors), shouldn't they self-contain their context to the level that they are comprehensible? note, i'm not talking about spin - that doesn't belong. but if basic comprehension of the paper requires reading secondary sources, isn't that a fundamental problem in how scientific papers are written? (i'm asking this as a person with a phd and post-doc, working as a data scientist now but i have read many many scientific papers). I'll note - older papers (1960's, 1970's, etc.), do seem to include more color and more explanation. some modern papers do too. but many are dry and kind of incomprehensible.