Dismissive Reviews

I just read a scary article: Dismissive Reviews: Academe's Memory Hole, by Richard P. Phelps.

The summary says:

...exposes how scholars fail to consult the research that has been done on their chosen topic and blandly claim themselves to be pioneers in the area.

That's scary enough, but the author takes as an example the literature supporting the No Child Left Behind law.

With the single exception of the federal mandate, there was no aspect of the NCLB accountability initiative that had not been tried and studied before. Every one of the NCLB Act’s failings was perfectly predictable, based on decades of prior experience and research. Moreover, there were better alternatives for every characteristic of the program that had also been tried and studied thoroughly by researchers in psychology, education, and program evaluation. Yet, policy makers were made aware of none of them.

Ignorance is bliss,
and it's easy to dismiss
all prior work
that hints where problems lurk.