Computer Science as a failed discipline

I write an email to a CS Prof. asking if they have any followup work on some nice OS measurement research they published a couple of years back. The response is that there is no followup and then:

Me: Too bad. Is it just me or has everyone given up on measurement in OS research?

Prof: It is tough to get reviewers to not have the “there is nothing surprising here” reaction to a measurement study.

For many years, people working in academic computer science argued about whether the field was “science” or “engineering”. To me, this is a silly distinction for a lot of reasons, but currently the field seems to have settled on “neither”.