It might have been protectionism, but also life is just complicated. Documentation is always incomplete and much of it is out of date as soon as you write it down. Humans have so many cognitive biases, we don't even notice half the things we do.
Many scientific studies cannot be replicated either due to errors or ambiguous steps.
You only have what you test. If you want working documentation, you have to do a blind test. That can be pretty dang expensive, and most people don't think that way. Running production is heavily motivated to just keep running, and not worry too much about all of the potential problems - there are just too many potential problems.
Many scientific studies cannot be replicated either due to errors or ambiguous steps.
You only have what you test. If you want working documentation, you have to do a blind test. That can be pretty dang expensive, and most people don't think that way. Running production is heavily motivated to just keep running, and not worry too much about all of the potential problems - there are just too many potential problems.