Since several people here are academics I thought this is the right place to ask. My apologies if this should not be here.

For the past year I've been working on my final paper for my Psychology degree. I've read hundrends of papers and books about religiosity, incarceration, coping and adjustment. I've realised a few things that worry me.

First and foremost, where is all this research going?
There are literally thousands of papers on every topic, all giving their dent to it. However, I have not seen any attempt to collect all those outcomes to a meaningful "whatever" in order to highlight the reaserch progress on a topic. All I see is scientists citing the same other scientists again and again, despite those "other scientists" having been disproofed (I apologise if this sounds mean).
I'll give you a psychology example. Kohlberg's theory of moral development has about 30.000 references, despite having been severely criticized and disproofed. To the best of my understanding, no one accepts his theory anymore, yet he keeps being referenced and lots of scientists base their research questions on his work, which to me sounds like they start on a wrong base.
Another example from my work is the deprivation and importation theories for prison adjustment. Although researchers have firmly concluded that there is a mix of factors described in those two theories that -to some degree- explain adjustment, researchers keep using those two theories as well grounded bases for their work. What's the point of that? Does it help science to progress? Shouldn't researchers work based on the most recent scientific papers? (unless ofc they want to re-examine something, which usually is not the case)

Secondly, who said what?
After reading so many papers, I've realised that some things are attributed to the wrong people. For example, problem and emotion focused coping is attributed to Lazarus & Folkman (1984), while it was Johnson (1962) -if I am not mistaken- who first introduced those two terms. To me, this shows that scientists just reproduce what they've read in another paper without examining it, like basing their research on secondary data.
I've also seen that on doctorate theses, people just COPYING what they've read in an other thesis, which is not even near to the content of the original cited paper! Of course this has to do with the scientific ethics of the PhD candidates, but to me it also reflects the chaotic situation I described in my first question and that the prifessors that judge the PhD candidate have lost track of all that research (repeating my first point again).

Thirdy, psychometrics.
I was reading about the shortened version of the COPE questionnaire, greek version, which concludes that a couple of religiosity items are subject to gender differences. However, researchers keep using it as this has never been said! This confirms my first questioning, that research is done in vain! Shouldn't that questionnaire be adjusted to eliminate gender differences? Let aside that standardizing is mainly done using university students! To me there are tons of questions arising in regard with psychometrics.
And to connect it with my first question again, on religiosity it has been well documented thath there is an operational difference between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (of which, extrinsic can be further broken down to personal and social extrinsic, with operational differences there too). However, research is still done with questionaires that do not seperate those 2 (maybe 2.5) types of religiosity. Does this not pose questions on the validity of the research?

So I am concluding to my first point again. Is all that research in vain? Is it just a mechanism of paper production? Or is it something I am missing because of my inexperience?

Thank you for your time and once again my apologies if I sounded insulting at some points.