"But this example also helps show the limits of VoI: VoI is best suited to situations where you've done the background research and are now considering further experiments."

Do you mean this in the sense that there is usually some low-hanging fruit (e.g. the background research itself) where the VOI is obviously so high that you there's no need to calculate it -- you obviously should obtain the information?

I think Douglas Hubbard, author of How to Measure Anything, makes a good case for making VOI calculations the default in important decisions. When he acts as a consultant, he first spends a couple of days training the decision makers in calibrating their probability assessments, and then they do a VOI calculation for all the important unknowns, based on those subjective probabilities. It's often precisely those questions for which they can't get much from background research and haven't even considered measuring -- because they don't know how to -- that have the highest VOI.

Maybe these cases are atypical, as they are biased towards difficult decisions that warrant hiring a consultant. But difficult decisions are the raison d'etre for the field of decision analysis.