Conducting experiments is expensive in both money and effort. Let's all sit in our comfy chairs and build fancier models with garbage data instead. If we could divine just the right formula, it will magically paper over the holes in the data. Sounds like every other scientific area I'm aware of. For whatever reason, the experimentalist is a dying breed.
Edit: Do you happen to have a link to a good aggregator for listening to "what's being published"?