1. It is more ‘admissible’ as evidence. In a courtroom, evidence has to pass a test before it’s introduced – what is its provenance? Who introduced it, and why did they look in the place that they did to find evidence that they are introducing. Content that is introduced into a process in this way is unlikely to be ‘inductive’ – produced as a wily response to a threat. It is likely to be honest and it’s more likely to be ‘disinterested’

2. It is more detached – you are likely to pick up more mild preferences and observations that can be weighted by others. So many peices of evidence that appear in articles, blog posts or research papers are there because they point to a pre-determined conclusion – ‘policy-based evidence making.’ By extracting a bunch of observations in this way, you are possibly ‘pre-populating’ an argument with lots of stuff that wouldn’t appear normally because it doesn’t lead to a neat conclusion.

I would say, however, that this is a complimentary activity rather than a standalone one, surely?