[tovej]

No, helping with chores is not the same as "performing research", it has limited utility for minor tasks, it is not essential and it does not even necessarily have a positive productivity impact. To illustrate the point, when I use vim to write LaTeX, would you say that vim is "performing research"?

[JimDabell]

The relevant part of what I quoted was not “performing research” it was “they don’t have access to existing literature”.

[tovej]

That part we also agree on, generating hypotheses is done on the basis of existing literature, lit review (& related reasoning) is done on the basis of existing literature. The blog author is talking about reasoning in the context of a new research topic.