Comment 18 by Atheist Mike :

People are stupid, pure and simple... And a more intellectual, truth-based paper might just be ignored because it's not as attractive to the masses.

There's danger of elitism here. Some people happily accept the charge of elitism provided that it's restricted to intellectual elitism.

I would mention, though, that there's an abundance of evidence that the so-called intelligensia can be just as stupid as everyone else. How else can we explain post-modernism, cultural relativism, obscurantism, and all the other nonsense that has occupied supposedly intellectual circles since, well, forever?

When you realize that academia is descended from the monasteries, and in most cultures priests and witch doctors are the resident "intellectuals", it becomes clear that intellectual elitism is something we should view with just as much suspicion as most other kinds of elitism.

Now scientific elitism...there might be a worthy elitism. Unfortunately, this does not equate to "intellectual elitism", or "liberal left elitism". The truth of a scientific claim is independent of the intelligence, sophistication and political orientation of its proponents.