[melling]

Perhaps not at the academic level, at least not initially, but drawing more people into science by making it easier to ask questions and get answers couldn't hurt. http://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/7/science

Someday there might be 1,000,000 well-defined science/math questions, along with great answers.

[ignifero]

There are science sections in quora as well, but people tend to post too many general/popsci/naive questions.