Dr. Judith Curry tips me to this interesting blog post from by Daniel Lakens, an experimental psychologist at the Human-Technology Interaction group at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.

The 20% Statistician

Five reasons blog posts are of higher scientific quality than journal articles

The Dutch toilet cleaner ‘WC-EEND’ (literally: ‘Toilet Duck’) aired a famous commercial in 1989 that had the slogan ‘We from WC-EEND advise… WC-EEND’. It is now a common saying in The Netherlands whenever someone gives an opinion that is clearly aligned with their self-interest. In this blog, I will examine the hypothesis that blogs are, on average, of higher quality than journal articles. Below, I present 5 arguments in favor of this hypothesis.

1. Blogs have Open Data, Code, and Materials [when technical articles are published, yes, whenever possible]
2. Blogs have Open Peer Review [oh, don’t you know it, except hardly anyone read RealClimate anymore]
3. Blogs have no Eminence Filter [just look at the variety of articles on Climate etc, Climate Audit, and WUWT]
4. Blogs have Better Error Correction [absolutely, mistakes are usually caught within minutes]
5. Blogs are Open Access (and might be read more). [no paywals=broad distribution]

Read his entire article for the thinking behind the reasons, my comments are [in brackets] above. Item 5 is particularly important. It has been said to me by a few people that WUWT has changed the world. I think it has, but I view it as a collective effort with other climate blogs. If climate blogs didn’t exist, there would be no exposure of Climategate, no exposure of the IPPC’s horrid messes in AR4 and AR5, among other issues.

There may be other benefits, I’m sure readers can add some points not covered above.