There is an excellent video from Google's Matt Cutts on the question Should I focus on clarity or jargon when writing content?
The short answer is focus on clarity over jargon.
Matt explains that in most cases, having content that most people understand is way more important that having all the scientific and technical jargon about the topic you are covering. If you can't explain the topic to a novice, then the reader likely won't be able to understand your content.
Best case, start off explaining it in simple terms and get more technical as you go. But if you had to pick, it seems Matt is saying content clarity is more important over detailed technical and scientific content, in most cases.
Here is the video:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
