I'm not sure why you have this idea that academia is resistant to paradigm shifts; they happen all the time. Any papers that are "risky" enough to start such paradigm shifts end up getting cited tons.
Its not me but rather its you who has the wrong idea that all papers with 50 citations are good. Or rather the more citation == better research.
Frankly almost 95% of papers are crap and better off not having been written, had it not been for publish or perish culture, or "lets count papers/cites to shame a Nobel award winning researcher culture" that you espouse.
Citations are a self reinforcing metric. Once a community starts counting them, the only way to succeed is to publish more which in turns leads to higher counts.
There is nothing wrong in publishing a good thorough paper over 4 years maybe slowly updating it as a working paper as done in economics.
I wish papers were "running", as in a wiki page with developments being incrementally added. It'd certainly help reduce the amount of redundant reading, and much greater coherency.
Frankly almost 95% of papers are crap and better off not having been written, had it not been for publish or perish culture, or "lets count papers/cites to shame a Nobel award winning researcher culture" that you espouse.
Citations are a self reinforcing metric. Once a community starts counting them, the only way to succeed is to publish more which in turns leads to higher counts.
There is nothing wrong in publishing a good thorough paper over 4 years maybe slowly updating it as a working paper as done in economics.