Neglecting Well-Established Industry Knowledge

From time to time I am wondering what reasons people have to ignore, neglect or even deny scientific findings and well-researched industry experience.

Maybe they are afraid of being told that they do not already know all aspects of their profession? Is it some strange realization of complacency? Or may it just be lousy laziness?

All my life I spent a significant part of my time studying many different topics and diverse issues. In early years I focused on basic sciences like zoology, physics, chemistry and astronomy. Throughout my later school years and at university my interests shifted to computer science and computer engineering. In recent years my professional career brought me to specialize on different aspects of IT and IT management.

In all these years I was always more than willing to learn more and bring to use the collective wisdom of professional communities. For me it always was impressing how much science can do for professional work. Unfortunately, in some corporate environments it seems to be almost a sin to follow well-established scientific findings. There is a sense of science being the realm of some freaky people that have no idea what real-world problems mean.

It's a pity that people---even managers---deny the knowledge of an industry out of personal shortcomings in education and, therefore, risk developing the wheel again and again...

Economic selection will surely come hard on companies accepting a culture of not utilizing well-established common knowledge!