> I'd like to see more work like this.

Me too, but not so much with subjects that have just a couple of months experience with the language.

I'd prefer to identify things that still confuse programmers with, say, five years.

Things that confuse noobs contain a lot of noise. If we craft a coding convention based on that, we might end up with:

  i = 1;
  total = 0;
  while (i <= 100) {
    total = total + a[i - 1];
    i = i + 1;
  }

because the noobs were confused by zero-based arrays; increment operators like i++; and the jumpy, out-of-order evaluation of for(;;) syntax.

I can recommend Code Complete by Steve McConnell. One of the primary aspects of this book that makes stand above other best-practices books is how much of it is sourced from software engineering research, although not the entirety. If nothing else, the bibliography is full of articles similar to the OP.