People are generally decent at knowing something exists, but generally poor at knowing what it is.

This is true for book reviews or UFOs/psychics/whatever. A reader can tell you the book wasn’t good and they’ll give a reason. Usually they’re right that it’s not good, and wrong about why.

The problem here is they’re right that it’s something (it’s not nothing), and probably wrong about the why. But most academic types won’t even acknowledge that it’s not nothing.

I could respect them if they said, “It’s not nothing, but right now the cost to inquire further into that topic is too high and not our area of focus”