Please Read and express your feelings and opinions....

On the spectrum of snark and hostility, I think A-gon is somewhere in the middle; I’ve certainly been on sites- not restricted to audio- with far more personal bloodletting, condoned by the site admins, and others that are much more heavily moderated.
Despite it all, whatever your perception or the reasons for it, there are some very generous contributors here who go out of their way to help, freely share information with no agenda and make this a place I still visit.
The forum (in the ancient Greek or Roman sense) is a noisy, hectic place.

The trick, to me (given that I am somewhat challenged in the math/physics/hard sciences department), is to translate the science into something that is readily understandable by those untutored in the relevant fields. I know that can lead to oversimplification but my experience working with witnesses as a lawyer is that the judge (and jury) needs to understand it. 
I think there is a certain mix of science or tech blended with communication skills that makes a big difference in how the message gets delivered and received. One can have a healthy argument without personalizing or belittling. 
There is also a fair amount of psychoacoustic stuff going on in audio, beyond the gear and its technical performance. That can be "tested" too, I suppose, but to me, there is an art to applying the science in a way that delivers the goods: one example- I like Vlad Lamm's SET amplifier. Its sonics had to do with some deliberate choices Vlad made beyond the specs. Is it magic? No. I think a lot of us have gaps in our knowledge and are open to learning. I know I am. I welcome information and healthy debate. Knocking heads doesn't help anybody, least of all contributors who probably have other, better things to do with their time. 

Geoff- Making the complex simple is an art. I don’t think the problem is confined to the hard sciences.
My technical knowledge is spotty, and mostly learned from experience, though I’ve certainly read a fair share, and when the need arises, I ask questions. Most people seem to be pretty gracious in sharing their knowledge unless there is something proprietary involved. (I’m now speaking as a hobbyist, not a lawyer-- I’m retired anyway, but I teach at the university level and it is a challenge to impart knowledge even to smart, ambitious students).
The other thing about audio, and here I’ll probably enter into the ’no go’ zone is that the end result of what i’m listening to is more than a bunch of equations or formulae. I’ve got to take into account room acoustics, gear set up, the source material (which is a huge variable in my experience). When it all works, it is akin to magic, even if there are scientific explanations for what I’m experiencing.
I live for those moments of musical transcendence. The gear is just the machinery to get there.