Tbh, a ton of academic papers are quite poorly written. I'm not a PhD researcher, but I did have to implement quite a few of the, (computer graphics, signals & systems etc), and with most of them, I basically reconstruct the author's tought process from scratch.
The formulas were opaque, notations unique and unconventional, terms appearing out of nowhere, sometimes standard techniques (like 'we did least-squares optimization') are expanded in detail, while other actually complex parts are glossed over.
My short academic career where I did my share of "what the hell are they saying they did" reverse engineering others' papers proved to be an excellent training for when I eventually transitioned to engineering.
The formulas were opaque, notations unique and unconventional, terms appearing out of nowhere, sometimes standard techniques (like 'we did least-squares optimization') are expanded in detail, while other actually complex parts are glossed over.