I wish I could remember where I read this (or even in what academic field). But some academic once wrote that his most acclaimed, most cited papers were always the ones he thought of as mere summaries of existing knowledge. This made a strong impression on me. In most cases when dealing with high-level ideas, very good restatements of previous research are not only valuable, but likely to make those ideas click for some non-trivial number of readers. A few other thoughts:

• This seems strongly related to the notion of inferential distance -- we tend to underestimate it.

• This is a good way to sum up the Lukeprog era of Less Wrong: There is plenty of low-hanging fruit in merely doing your research and saying the obvious.

• If people are disinclined to say the obvious, I wonder how many conversations on difficult topics consist mostly of talking past one another. Perhaps more than we'd otherwise think.