That's my point though. Even extremely smart people can stumble on a dense abstract. It is the nature of language- just because I know what I mean does not me

That's my point though. Even extremely smart people can stumble on a dense abstract. It is the nature of language- just because I know what I mean does not mean that you do. Even if you write something that can only be interpreted correctly in one way, there is still room for misinterpretation or total lack of understanding. I was really trying to say that if a paper with no meaning made it through screening (no matter how light) then maybe the papers are too dense. In response to 1), I have always found that scientific papers provide more verbose explanations for even simple concepts. I have reread entire paragraphs three times only to discover that I already have a firm grasp of the concept being discussed and can explain it in a single sentence. But it probably just depends on the author and the verbosity could be explained by your 2): removing all uncertainty by explaining exactly what you mean.