I wonder why so many academic papers use English words and succeed in being impossible to read.

And long. There's no way that article needs to be 22 pages. Reminds me of Adam Smith including corn price tables in "The Wealth of Nations" because he was paid by the word.

I forget his name, but I saw a blogger on substack who published readable versions of his academic papers. IIRC His claim was that the reviewers demand the obfuscation, and that it's a form of elitism. I came across him writing about how his academic versions get ignored, but the readable versions were widely shared.

Just ran a few quick searches, but I didn't find him. Maybe later.