> who wrote the article?

This seems to be an improvement over academia imo. The person writing the article should be immaterial. The same paper written by an unheard of researcher should be treated no differently than the same paper written by a well-known, tenured researcher at a prestigious institution. Unfortunately in academia, who you are and who you know is often as big a deal as what you do and what you know.

> What is their background? are they a domain expert?

Again, the methodology should stand alone. Being a "domain expert" or having a particular background is only relevant if the readers of the article are incapable of judging the results on their own merits, and have to instead rely appeals to authority. But appeals to authority introduce their own problems, including a moat that protects the status quo and the ingroup from potentially important new ideas and newcomers. And its hardly scientific.

> where they did get their sources? how did they come to conclusions? is their method sound? are they asking relevant questions? etc. etc.

These need not be restricted to academic work. If a blog fails to properly cite sources, you can move on. Plenty of academic papers are built on flimsy premises, poor methodology, asking incorrect questions, etc. etc. There is nothing differentiating the ability to assess the quality of something written in a blog vs something written in an academic journal here.

> And I don't always see that happening online. On the contrary. The fluidity and the speed at which information flows online seems to be a justification to give in and accept what's being said at face value. The past few years should have made it clear that such indulgence can lead to dire consequences.

And yet, as noted, the more conservative approach of academia has resulted in a huge amount of unreproducible "science". And now, in a time of crisis, the stringent model is being set aside in favor of openly available preprints shared online, without peer review, via social media. How can the traditional model be considered useful when, in times without urgency, the validity of its results are highly questionable, and in times of urgency, its thrown aside for the sake of actual progress? It seems to me the modern academic method is largely a facade, something closer to an ornate religious ritual that has been divorced of its actual intentions.

> But that's only half of the story: you still have to apply critical thinking to those conclusions. That's not something throwing more code or technical skills can achieve.

This assumes that those coding or utilizing technical skills are doing so without critical thinking. Perhaps this is true some of the time, but I don't see the situation being any different in academia.

> Having a proper, critical debate takes time and experience.

What constitutes a "proper, critical debate" is subjective. And from my position, it would appear that the advent of the internet and freedom of information is making the current academic model unsustainable and obsolete. And so academia has an entrenched interest in defining "proper, critical debate" in a way that protects their livelihood.

I'm not saying there isn't plenty of poorly written science and analysis being done on blogs out there. I'm simply saying I don't think traditional academia and science is much different.