What’s right with lecturing?

It would be easy to get the impression that there’s a huge gap between theory and practice in university mathematics teaching. On the one hand educational research is widely portrayed as having exploded the myth that lecturing is an effective form of teaching. On the other hand lectures remain a staple of most degree courses and even seem to be reasonably popular with students studying mathematics [1 2]. Are lecturers ignoring important evidence that could improve their teaching? Are educational researchers living in a fantasy world with no connection to the chalkface? Or can theory and practice perhaps be reconciled?