Is it just because they lack knowledge? Or they don’t recognise when an idea is clearly bullshit? Or is there simply not an audience for it?

The other angle is the space industry, which again suffers from overly credulous reporters. There’s nothing wrong with calling out some of the ridiculous companies and projects out there, but very few journalists actually do it.

I want to believe people want to know about this, but that they are put off by poor articles that don’t explain anything or go for sensational stories.

On the other hand, I like the idea of writing posts that use recent papers or popular astronomy news topics as a way to explain the background theory. Most people know almost nothing about dark matter (astronomers included, but that’s another story) or anything else about the cosmos around us.

But as I’ve written before, this is really rare. If a headline tells you about a recent discovery of aliens, or of dark matter, or of a new fundamental theory, 99% of the time it will be completely false. And that just breeds mistrust in science

More to the point, progress in physics and astronomy is mostly a slow process of accumulation. There’s a temptation in science media to label everything as a breakthrough or a revolution. .

They are plenty of ex-astronomers (me among them) who went on to do other things, but few of them are going to be interested in more readable forms of papers they already know how to read, if they want to.

You have to admire the dedication.

Personally, I'm working on a paper outlining why my toaster must have been built by aliens.

Is this like the Pope Mobile?