There is no doubt that the best detailed source of information on the real science that is being done is in the published papers that scientists are required to turn out to prove that they are still alive and working. But the problem for everyday human beings is a) They are often expensive to get access to (hence the open access business that gets the likes of the excellent Stephen Curry so worked up)  b) The are often almost unreadable unless you are already an expert in the field. A new initiative called The 21st Floor Wiki Project aims to change that be asking scientists to contribute a page to a Wiki for each paper they publish that explains what the paper says to the general reader. It sounds a great idea, though I suspect many scientists couldn't be bothered to do it, and if they did do it would struggle to make it readable. However, let's not damn it before it's tried. Here's more details from the handy press release. Why not take a look at the real thing...

A journal which I'm sure is very readable A while ago, straying through the depths of Nature Network , I saw an item on writing more readable papers. There may well be several out there - it's a hoary old topic. I don't dispute the suggestion that many scientific papers could be better written, but in the end, however approachable, they are unlikely to get a reprint in Heat magazine, so it is still a matter of writing to the audience. Without doubt, though, it's a relief when the writer of a paper adopts a lighter tone and writes like a human being, rather than a robot. I suppose the best known instance of putting a human face to a paper, which some have held up as a shining example of what's possible, is Einstein's paper on subjective time. The abstract reads: When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity. In the paper he allegedl...