It's a reflection on the state of the field, I think, that there is such a volume of lesser known good work hiding among an even larger volume of noise and fluf

It's a reflection on the state of the field, I think, that there is such a volume of lesser known good work hiding among an even larger volume of noise and fluff that neither the authors nor the reviewers caught such an oversight. (And reviewers are usually pretty aggressive about suggesting related work.)