Comment by billyjobob

In academia I would often meet people who were unable to explain what they working on in language I could understand, even though their PhDs were in the same field as my own. Sometimes I would have to interrogate them for more than ten minutes, like getting blood from a stone, before I got a clue what it was. I think if you can't explain what are you doing in general terms in 30 seconds to a layman you probably don't really understand what you are doing.