another misconception

I used to always think that our great professors kept up-to-date with advances in their area by researching, going through the latest issue of some magazine etc. Now I would say that it is because they have to review papers. In order to judge how much a paper adds to current knowledge you have to learn the knowledge, even if you do know the state-of-the-art, probably this paper is using some exterior method and is introducing it to the something in this field.. Then you have to go and read about the method from other fields it has been used in. As a result, if you are in enough number of committees then you simply get to learn things.