The Negative Effects of Veneration on Productivity

It's not clear to me that veneration does actually get people, especially be more productive in a field. People too focused on the greatness of previous thinker usually just want to spend a lot of their careers talking about how great that person is. And I don't see that advances anything. Often it makes them dumber in that there's arguments they wouldn't even accept if not for the fact that they're a great thinker who said it.