To call something revisionist history is tantamount to saying that it is made-up history. Yet no one would characterize new findings in chemistry as revisionist chemistry. Part of the reason for this divergence is that there is a pervasive popular opinion that somehow the past lingers on to force the hand of those who reconstruct it. To insist that historical knowledge begins with someone's questions destroys that illusion. Also there is the issue of nostalgia.
Few people are nostalgic about their biology lessons.
Not so about what they have learned about the past. Rather, those accounts are indelibly inscribed. To pick up your child's textbook and discover material unknown in your own time is often a dizzying experience. The best antidote for this intellectual vertigo is to have a better grasp of how historians go about creating historical scholarship in the first place. And all of us can supply this relief.