From blog posts to research papers; successful cases?
First, it totally depends how you define the term “research paper”. Some people uses a blog in such a way that (some or all) blog entries are actually akin to minimal-size “research papers”, albeit with a nonconventional publication mean and possibly nonconventional format.

Secondly, it also depends where you draw the line between “turning X into Y” and “writing X based on Y”. Obviously, many journals would object to publishing material that has already been published somewhere else, including on a personal blog. Moreover, publishing identical content in two very different media probably means that it is not fully adapted to one of the two (or both): to give only one example, you don't typically have the same language level on a blog as in an academic paper.

Finally, an example: scientific writer Philip Ball has a blog on the topic of Water in Biology, and he also regularly publishes “News &amp; Views” articles for Nature (one example there). In both cases, he writes critical reviews the recent literature on the same topic: there is wide overlap, but he does not publish his papers by directly converting blog posts.