An interesting idea from an old suggestion is running our own usability studies. It's not something I'm set up to do myself, but if we could make it work it would be awesome to have blog posts sharing original research, especially answering questions from the site that don't already have research-backed answers.
I don't want to sign us up for anything too huge, but it'd be easy to conduct some simple A/B tests, perhaps using Usara or other online services if no one wants to donate their lab.