That's true, and it works well for subjective or popular topics. However, it works much less well for highly specialized, technical topics. I have noticed that

That's true, and it works well for subjective or popular topics. However, it works much less well for highly specialized, technical topics. I have noticed that quite a few very technical, or highly specialized articles end up with just a small handful of comments. This is a problem in research because just about everything is technical and specialized. Another problem is recruiting enough people to actually review all the research produced. HN has a handful of links per day. There are tens of thousands of researchers around the world doing work. Peer reviewers aren't generally compensated monetarily, but they have a strong moral incentive to help out and review articles, especially if they themselves have published in the journal in question. Again, I don't want to come across as defending the entire system. There are certainly things to be improved. All I'm saying is that I don't think the answer is to just tell everyone to start a blog. It's an appealing idea from a populist, egalitarian, and perhaps "hacker" perspective (just get the information out there!), but the current system provides a bit more than a simple communications medium.