Academic writing is all about audience. The primary publication is something akin to a proof, and precise language is important there. I'll be damned in most naming conventions aren't terrible, but if I say "white blood cell", that means one thing to the layman, but to the academic, that means one of several things.

People often tell me that academics have no choice but to write badly because the gatekeepers of journals and university presses insist on ponderous language as proof of one’s seriousness,

More often it's a page-limit that removes explanatory sentences and crunches phrases down into polysyllables. At a certain point, you have to pick what to define and what not to. I would assume a scientific audience knows molecular orbital theory but maybe not Raman scattering. But then again, I'm not going to re-list the rules of quantum mechanics if I'm writing to physicists and I consider that to be common knowledge among them.

Still a good read and shared, the "Curse of Knowledge" is definitely one I encounter a lot.