[danielf]

Originally Posted by Chris

There must be room for academic discussion, but in the age of the interwebs those who seek to generate that discussion must be aware that they can no longer assume that the intended audience and the actual audience are the same, or even broadly similar. I agree with Mertle, it was very naive of them to be shocked when their paper achieved such wide coverage.

This is not to say they shouldn't be allowed to write such things, but rather in our information age they should, while writing, have a strategy in mind for answering questions that may then come from outside of their academic ivory tower.

One wonders if any questions were asked of them, or if perhaps some irresponsible hack just ran with the story without asking for clarification. I don't think academic papers should stoop to the lowest common denominator just in case the press picks up on them. They'll become impossible to read for the target audience.