..it's certainly not constructive for people to be picking sides without actual understanding of a topic.

On the contrary, I find it extremely constructive to pick sides. The world is complex, and if we wait for 'all the facts' to roll in, we'll basically never form an opinion on anything. Instead, I think we should constantly form opinions based on what we know and understand, but try to also form opinions about how sure we ought to be of ourselves.

Sport is more fun to watch if you pick a side to root for. Similarly, picking a side is a neat way to make yourself care temporarily about a subject.

..many people are working on problems which are several steps removed from anything that's applicable..

I think my phrasing of 'making advances accessible' is flexible enough to admit abstract research. Indeed, I claim it will happily support art and literary criticism. Making things accessible doesn't imply convincing others that it's concretely useful; that is too subjective a metric. Instead, it means being able to explain what you did, and to set it in context so that the average educated person can put on a belief system as a frame of reference. "If I care about art, what X has worked on is..," etc.

..even understanding things on a basic level may necessitate years of training.

The true goal of expertise is to transcend complexities to arrive at simplicity -- and to describe the voyage as a story.

Often the expert requires data to back up his hypothesis, and understanding the intricacies of a proof, or the body of evidence -- that may be something only an expert can do. But once the work has been vetted the conclusions should be understandable by outsiders.

Few people have read Darwin's Origin of Species. I am told much of it is evidence of various species adaptations. But it is a great work because the conclusions have spread far beyond its direct readership.

Robert Sapolsky is one of my favorite examples of this, for his ability to explain arcane theories of biology without requiring any biological background whatsoever. Similarly, I picked up Morse Peckham at some point and got a sense that I learned something.