The Grantification of Academic Writing

In my day job I read a good number of academic articles.  They are written in specialty journals with audiences consisting of spine surgeons and researchers.  Regardless of the narrow scope and intimate audience of the journals, the authors invariably feel compelled to fill the introduction of every article with the prevalence of back pain, its cost to society etc.  Enough!  We've got it.  Move on to the interesting part.  As the reader I'm not sitting on your grant committee, so I don't need to be sold on something I already know and am quite tired of reading slight variations on the theme of how much this topic costs "society."