Those scientists who work at the frontier of knowledge in a particular sub-discipline often disagree with each other, some-times vehemently. Generally, though, as more information becomes available on a subject, the investigators begin to find out which ideas are right and which wrong by the success of their predictions, and gradually the scientists in that discipline reach a consensus, then the frontier moves on to new areas, where new disagreements emerge, meanwhile, scientists in other sub-disciplines, even of the same general field, may frequently misunderstand hypotheses recently accepted by those in a different sub-discipline, for example, astronomers who are expert in the study of the structure of stars may have quite a wrong idea about the confidence with which their colleagues estimate the distance to a particular cluster of galaxies.
If even scientists within the same discipline are often in the dark about an aspect of their discipline not in their own field of specialization, how can the public hope to interpret strange-sounding claims that purport to apply at the frontier? The very language spoken by scientific experts is alien to many of their colleagues; how much more foreign it must sound to those outside science altogether.

那些从事某一分支学科前沿领域研究的科学家见解常常相左，有时甚至针锋相对。
尽管如此，一般随着某学科所掌握的信息越来越多，研究人员根据他们的成功预测开始明白他们见解的孰对孰错，这一学科科学家逐渐形成共识，这样前沿研究领域就向纵深发展到下一个新的领域，这样新的学术分歧又产生了。与此同时，甚至于同一专业的其他分支学科的科学家也许经常误解那些不同分支学科科学家所刚刚接受的某些研究假设。例如，天文学家是研究星系结构的专家，他们可能持有相当错误的观念：对同行估算某一银河系星群间的距离深信不疑。
只要同一学科内的科学家常常对不属自己专业领域的本学科的某一方面也茫然无知，那么又怎么能让公众理解那些声称在前沿研究领域使用的听起来怪怪的学术主张呐？正是科学家之间的解释不相一致，互相矛盾才使得科学界以外的公众势必听起来云里雾里，天方夜谭。
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