“Selected articles were required reading in my college science courses. Sometime in the 1980’s they decided real science was too difficult for their readers and their staff, and they became a science version of USA Today.”

I recently read a comment by Jerry Pournelle, about teaching, and standards of literacy, that other faculty at Pepperdine when he taught there, had laughed at him, when he pointed out that the Federalist Papers were published mainly as letters to the editors of various newspapers. He commented that possibly they did not believe him (about the truth of that fact): IOW, they believed that the Federalist Papers could not have been published in newspapers, because they are too ‘difficult’ for today’s readers, and ergo, must have been too difficult for those readers. The (mis)logic in the assumptions are myriad.

As Jerry Pournelle points out, a Dark Age is not just when you cannot do things you once could, but when the memory of things you could once do is lost. Academentia is rapidly approaching that state.

And to NC Mountain Girl: Roger is just following Keynes example: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?