You might not have given the "right test" in terms of the actual userbase, but it is absolutely the right test in terms of Elicit's marketing claims. Elicit might be implicitly geared for the general public, but they are explicitly marketing to scientists.
I suspect a lot of Elicit's target users want to use scientific knowledge in their personal/professional lives, but without doing the hard work of gaining scientific understanding. However, they're not going to spend money on a product that says "we use AI to create sciencey bullshit that sounds plausible in conversation." They want a product that Real Scientists would use. (Similar to how purely decorative Damascus steel Bowie knives are gussied up by an outdoorsman pretending to use the knife to gut a fish or whatever.)