With each public remark a scholar may add to society’s collective working memory or subtract from it. Their addition is the new research they present in a journal article or conference presentation. The subtraction, when it occurs, is typically found in the scholar’s portrayal of previous research on the topic.
Editors typically grant scholars, and especially celebrity scholars, quite a bit of latitude in how they reference the universe of other relevant research. The single new study presented in a manuscript sent to a scholarly journal for review may be rigorously critiqued even while the literature review presented at the beginning is not reviewed at all. This dynamic allows scholars to write pretty much anything they please about the universe of research—declaring themselves to be the first in the world to study the topic (and, thus, to be the world’s foremost expert), ignoring or demeaning the work of professional rivals, or referencing only the work of friends, who may return the favor in their own writings.
Preposterous, you say?
Indeed, the practice of “dismissive reviews” pervades contemporary scholarship. Look for yourself. Access a standard internet search engine, such as Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, and enter phrases such as: “there is no research,” “this is the first study,” “little research exists,” “there are few studies,” “paucity of research,” and the like.
Here are some search engine counts I got on Google (September 12, 2022) for certain phrases: