You are right that BG underestimates the difficulties of a lay person/Arts Graduate understanding original medical literature. My experience of looking directly at reports in medical journals is often one of near total incomprehension brought on by a combination of their specialist medical and statistical terminology. Neither of these formed any significant part of my science and mathematical education, which was hardly lacking. I find the conclusion and abstract are often the only parts I can understand. Therefore I am totally reliant on the researchers' interpretation of their findings.

As such I think he is at times, as you say, overly harsh on journalists. By the same count, BG obviously has a good point regarding science education and not leaving science reporting in the hands of generalist journalists with humanities degrees who, however intelligent they are, have no grounding in the technical detail of the subject.

There is probably also a tangential point to be made about the value of a baccalaureate type qualification at 18 which would require a combination of both arts and sciences. GCSE-level science and maths are still fairly basic (and, if I recall, often "wrong" or at least very over-simplified), but are the point at which many highly-educated and intelligent people stop their studying of such subjects.