I would argue that not all research is given the same credit. While this may sound like sour grapes because I mostly worked on projects that tested ideas in applied settings, I still believe that basic research is often more respected and certainly easier than applied research. Certainly research that carefully controls all but a few variables and randomly assigns participants to treatments is the best approach for the discovery of new principles, this is not the situation practitioners face. I am guessing that many valid principles identify factors that even if addressed are not sufficient to overcome the variability in learner samples and messiness with which different application attempts create to produce consistent positive results. Investing your time evaluating “proven” principles in applied situations tends to mean you spend more time on a given project and have more frequent studies producing nothing of statistical significance. If this is your thing, you are simply less likely to generate the number of publishable studies in contrast to those who focus on cleaner controlled studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n