Understanding a single scientific paper is easier than many people think. Understanding something like the temperature trend from 1850, or the growth trend in

Understanding a single scientific paper is easier than many people think. Understanding something like the temperature trend from 1850, or the growth trend in artificially-bred corn over the last 100 years, is pretty easy, requiring little more than grade-school arithmetic. But in my experience, people don't want to merely understand the existence of that trend. They want to understand the broader ideas of climate science, evolution, medicine, etc. That means understanding where the data comes from, what sort of filters have been applied, what principles account for it, how those principles have been lab-tested and on what scale, etc. It's that sort of understanding that's hard.