1 There is a difference between denigrating and critiquing.

2 "One of the disturbing aspects of modern research is the it has become a tendency to denigrate the work done by past researchers … Unless we learn to incorporate all research into our understand we will end up knowing less than we know now "

I would rather take advice on how to think about the researchers of the past from somebody capable of grasping the issues raised by point 1 and the flaws in point 2, and who understood that publishing not one but two accounts of English folk song underpinned by the Marxist historical thinking of the day (as Lloyd did) is a political act.