Everything on this website is open to constant scrutiny. Anybody with a comment in agreement or disagreement is free to send them. I can then make revisions as necessary. Something published in an academic journal will be reviewed by perhaps two or three reviewers and published if they see fit. Thereafter, what is published cannot be altered even if the writer's position changes markedly. Sometimes one may see errata published, but these do not concern what author's think. They are most commonly published because of a printer's error. What is more, Errata are fine for those who subscribe to a particular journal. Those searching for odd references some time after publication have no way of knowing aboiut or being made aware of the errors. Even electronic versions of academic journals cannot be changed after publication – and I have not seen any with flags to errata or revisions of the author's position. In some respects this seems rather odd; it treats electronic media as if it were the same as old fashioned paper: static. Certainly there is a need to preserve an original final version of an article – largely for historical purposes – but there seems to be no reason why the author can't go back and provide errata, addenda or even 'forward references' to subsequent relevant material. One article central to my own field of interest has been cited over 100 times and reprinted on at least two occasions in edited volumes of key papers. On those latter occasions the author attached various addenda to the extent that at the end of the most recently published version he notes that with the hindsight of some thirty years reflection, the original article was not as originally thought or intended and was, in fact, not really about the topics named in the title after all! Workers, unaware of these addenda, are still citing the original version and the author's discarded ideas as if he still held them.
The BMJ adopts the useful approach of allowing comments to be posted at the end of electronically published articles. These may be posted at any time and interested parties can choose to be automatically informed by email when new comments are added – there have been occasions when I have received notification of comments added to papers I've found interesting some years after their original publication. The article may not change, but at least intellectual inter-activity is generated – and not just during the window of publication.
On this website my ideas are laid bare in that any reader – whether they are my academic peers or just thoughtful members of the general public – can provide a comment. Anybody can be a peer reviewer, although I remain the final arbiter of what constitutes a useful comment and whether previously posted ideas ought to be modified or not. Constructing a website for the expression of ideas in this way means that one could find that some of its future peer reviewers have not even been born yet! Thus, perpetual peer review is virtually unlimited.
What is more, opinions and understandings change. Interpretations of data can change. What may or may not have been acceptable at one moment in time may be otherwise at some date in the future.