Escaping the rabbit hole: turning information overload into cumulative knowledge again

Chemical Engineering is increasingly distinguished by its breadth: catalysis, separations, electrochemistry, materials processing, bioprocesses, digitalization, and sustainability are now tightly intertwined. For researchers entering any of these areas, the abundance of papers can be both inspiring and cognitively exhausting. In principle, review articles should reduce this burden by transforming dispersed findings into understanding. In practice, however, many reviews have drifted toward being catalogues of results - useful as bibliographies, but weak as learning tools - because they often under-explain why trends occur, which mechanisms are supported, and what questions remain unanswered. This Perspective argues that the erosion of explanatory synthesis is not merely a stylistic problem; it is a symptom of incentive structures, delegated authorship practices, and a “publish-or-perish” culture that rewards output volume over durable understanding. Keeping in mind the common and fundamental questions typical of chemical engineering, we try to explore the current literature, and we suggest some recommendations to avoid losing oneself in the rabbit hole of data