I frequently co-operate and discourse with academics, and indeed supply some of them with specialist information, having spent a long time studying the minutiae of the subject. There are several points that might be relevant here. Just as there are relatively isolated scholars beavering away for decades, who occasionally get things wrong, there are academics in quite high places who do so as well.


We also need to take into account that our subject is very understudied and undervalued for various reasons, and academics and scholars in the subject are indeed few and far between, particularly in the UK. In fact I would go as far as to say the UK is arguably the poorest represented country in the First World in our subject.


Peer review is indeed very valuable, when it works, particularly in subjects that are heavily studied. However internal politics in our institutions often come into play, for instance, where a leading professor presents the fruits of some theorising, and lesser mortals have to be careful what they criticise.


I don't wish to name any names, but several years ago a professor wrote a book on our subject that contained some ground-breaking assertions. At first the book received rave reviews, mainly because he was highly respected in his own faculty and in the genre in general. It was a few years later that other academics began to pull his theses to pieces and showed how inaccurate they were.


Independent scholars have their own agendas (Bert Lloyd?), but so do academics.