Agreed that physics would hugely benefit from exposure to modern techniques in computer science, "software carpentry," and statistics. How can that be encouraged, though? It's not in the curricula, and those are ossified and hard to shift. Individual researchers forging out on their own can't move the field much themselves. Summer schools, maybe, which could create ad-hoc communities carrying skills back to their home institutions?
As to the temporal bias in literature awareness: it's sort of unavoidable in any research area of decent size. The scope of the literature is simply too enormous. Certain key papers get codified as canon and others are lost in the fog. The situation isn't helped by the various journal publishers, whose various paywalls prevent an effective biobliometric universe which could be used as a discovery engine for old but relevant papers.
As to the temporal bias in literature awareness: it's sort of unavoidable in any research area of decent size. The scope of the literature is simply too enormous. Certain key papers get codified as canon and others are lost in the fog. The situation isn't helped by the various journal publishers, whose various paywalls prevent an effective biobliometric universe which could be used as a discovery engine for old but relevant papers.