Der Linen Blackbird,
...I am just slowly catching up on all the discussions here, but wanted to drop you a brief comment to your last reply that I definitely agree that we all should spend much more time on thinking how to explain the things we found than just looking at it from a single angle, which is mostly the one that our 5 next colleagues can follow. I myself am also quite active in outreach and this is exactly my motivation to do it: these people out there ask totally different questions than my peers and it is often the most "naive" questions that are so hard to answer. Besides this, we usually have one way of explaining a finding but trying to cast it into different words or changing the viewing angle yield a deeper understanding than just giving the same expert-talk over and again. Yet, if we want to foster this culture among the next generation of scientists, we need more people who are willing to change their viewing angle, reach out to establish interdisciplinary collaborations, and are given the time and the opportunities to be more creative and innovative. Hence, institutions should provide less hamster wheels of admin and all other kinds of tasks but promote creative and innovative thinking by giving people more freedom and time to explore. (In some cases, I think, it would already suffice to reduce the work load of duties to free people's minds)
Best wishes,
Beige Bandicoot.