[fdupress]

Sorry, just saw this.

Which claim do you disagree with? The claim that the trend I describe exists, or the fact that it is bad?

Note that what you describe is what I advocate: you explain that the question exists and hasn't been answered. This is not an argument that is based on the volume of work that exists.

It is also an argument you cannot (as an author) be trusted to make. Even if you cite everything that has been published that is tangentially related to your claimed contribution, there is no way a reviewer will know all of it, and no way a reviewer will be able to go and read all of it. So they can't determine whether your claim of novelty is correct unless they already know the entire field. The only defense against this is to encourage crisp and clear descriptions of claimed contributions (to knowledge or practice) and violently reject any overinflated claims. It is not to include an entire survey paper in the introduction of every piece of work that pushes the state of the art forward.

It does mean that the average paper is less accessible to the non-expert. It also encourages the regular publication of surveys whose role is solely to critically and exhaustively compare recent advances, and of textbooks whose role is to describe historic developments and their context. This is not something every paper should be doing.