And to add to this - there is no particular incentive to get historical facts right, there might be disincentives from espousing politically unpalatable parts of history and there are incentives for the best and brightest to be doing something other than researching history.

Historians are probably reporting best-available information, but there is no special reason to believe they are right. Like economists a historian is best used as a living catalogue who can point you to examples where an idea has been tried before.