> Then use both. Many science 'educators' do a terrible job of dumbing things down so much that kids who want to pursue their interest farther get filtered when they hit the scholarly literature unless they are lucky enough to have imaginative teachers.

Exactly… I never understood the point of making science more accessible to the masses, if the compromise was making the actual science inaccessible to the inquiring mind. There’s no reason there can’t be a simple abstract followed by the actual science and associated images / maths.