Scientists really have to do a better job at communicating clearly with less jargon
While I tend to agree with you about jargon, the ironic thing is that jargon is explicitly created to communicate more clearly. It is all about speaking to your audience, if you are talking to a fellow slashdotter you say "dual core CPU", if you are talking to your grandparents you say "computer with two brains". Both are very clear to their target audience and incomprehensible drivel to the other, so which is "communicating clearly"? Many concepts are very hard to break down into terms of microwave ovens, buying groceries, and fixing your car analogies. But I agree that just because something is hard that we should quit trying.
If 99% of the people are idiots and 1% of them ask a question you cannot immediately answer; congratulations: you just got 1% smarter and 1% is a HUGE gain in any endeavour worth earnestly chasing.
That sounds very good until you have to deal with that 99% who are trying to discredit you and ruin your career. You should read to get a little taste for the kind of "questions" you usually get: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog The whole question is a little bit mute anyway as a mechanism for dealing with this, any many other problems, is already used: replication of results. Published results are generally not widely accepted until they can be replicated in a different lab. This overcomes any coding errors, but more importantly, equipment errors, user errors, random chance, and even active data manipulation. I think what most people who are not actively involved in research fail to realize is what an iterative process science is. Early results are often, maybe even usually, error ridden. This can come from bad code or anything else. But as more people work on it and improve it the errors are removed and the final product is something very close to ground truth, and the longer it is discussed the closer it gets to that goal. If you don't believe me I would ask you where you think computers, automobiles, pain killers, vaccines, rockets, cameras, genetically modified mice, and skyscrapers come from. All of those required an incredible detailed, and accurate, knowledge of how the working components function. Science, it works bitches.
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life. -- Schulz