At that point, the contribution of the paper to the prestige and marketability of the author is determined. Certain journals and authors simply need not be cited by others who publish higher up the pecking order. And books can be ignored whenever convenient. The finding that the trade performance of industries influences wage rates, politically incorrect though in this case plausible on neoclassical theoretical grounds, may be a similar sort of case. We have in these cases the spectacle of economists defending arguments on the ground that 'most economists believe' them.
Selection biases operate in smaller ways as well.
At my major university, and I suppose others, a small committee of the economics faculty chooses a short list of principles textbooks from which all lesser lights, the acting instructors and teaching assistants who actually teach much of introductory economics, must select. Someone must of course maintain standards, but the list is not inclusive. Like most, the economics department at my university is a fairly conservative place. Politicized economists have long pointed to ideological struggle, epitomized in modern times by the furious battle at Harvard over the nonpromotion in 1969-1970 of the radicals S. Bowles, H. Gintis and A. MacEwan. But I think the main reason lies more generally in the drive to professionalize the training of economists over the past twenty or thirty years.