Repeatability is the benefit of steps, I can open the grind and return to the same setting and get the same results. Can I see a difference with a 5 micron adjustment? Yes, not in flow rate but on the resistance plot of the DE1, but changes in puck preparation can have a larger impact than a 5 micron adjustment.

I'll give you a tip of where to search evidence but you're looking in the wrong direction. You won't find research related to coffee but you should be able to find a lot of evidence of how bad humans are in doing things exactly the same everytime. Trying to repeat a stepless adjustment on a grinder with a very tough collar like a Mazzer of minuscule dial like a Eureka is near impossible and those have a 2mm and 1mm thread size and the LWW only 0.5mm with 100 steps.

So for humans the LWW adjustment is much better as we are the weak link in the chain in this case. So focus your reasearch there and you'll find all of the answers. And after using the EG-1 for around 3.5 years I didn't find it to be a problem ever.

5 micron is very small, I use 1z J Max which has 8.8 microns per click

it is almost stepless and very hard to find a difference between the two steps because it is very small. I think it is better than a stepless grinder because you can write down the number you like exactly