The amount of foundational knowledge it takes to make heads or tails of a lot of research is well outside what can be reasonably assumed of a lay person. For e

The amount of foundational knowledge it takes to make heads or tails of a lot of research is well outside what can be reasonably assumed of a lay person. For example, let's say you found something interesting in Particle Physics. You figured out the mass of the W boson to another 3 decimal places or some such. To make that result at all interesting to a lay person, you need to pile on enough background information to establish context. What's a W boson? Well it's part of a symmetry group in the Standard Model -> Symmetry Groups? Quantum mechanics? -> etc etc. Know what they call enough background information to be able to begin to appreciate the research in a given field? A bachelors degree.