Popular [scientific] book must be strictly scientific. Care for the simplicity of writing should not result in simplification of the problem ... presenting a hypothesis as an indestructible truth, describing one hypothesis but leaving out other ones, the popularizer nurtures in the reader primitiveness of reasoning.
Ye. Lichtenstein, Editing a scientific book, 1957.
The whole point of popular scientific books, as opposed to professional ones, is to simplify and reduce the amount of content. Even if everyone can understand the full complexity of the subject, not everyone wants to spend the time and effort studying it.
I want to learn about the accepted theories of biology and physics and chemistry, not all the competing hypotheses and caveats and special cases and supporting evidence and the history of their discovery, because I just don't have time for all of that!
The quote seems to reduce to "scientific books should not be popular in the first place". (In the sense of being aimed for the general population, not the sense of being bestsellers.)
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: