I agree, but it's unlikely that they will get respect and reward within the academy. They are just as susceptible to feelings of envy as people outside the acad

I agree, but it's unlikely that they will get respect and reward within the academy. They are just as susceptible to feelings of envy as people outside the academy. You can see this manifest itself in the academy's treatment of Carl Sagan, and in the many ramblings of Murray Gell-Mann about Richard Feynman. Sure, their expositions of the science may not have been rigorous and they weren't perfect human beings, but maybe that's what it takes to popularize science and draw people in. I often see the role of science popularization as that of turned the science illiterate to literate, not the uneducated to the educated.