Research is:
- From Cambridge dictionary:
a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding.
- From Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries:
a careful study of a subject, especially in order to discover new facts or information about it.
- From Wikipedia:
creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge.
- From Western Sydney University
the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings.
In essence, research means the creation of new knowledge.
Hence, the only guaranteed difference between before and after research is the increase in knowledge about some topic.
It does not entail “meet specific demand of some use cases and/or to tackle some current technical issues”. Research is about answering a question, not solving an issue. Thus it’s more important to ask the right question than to find the best solution.
The misleading spirit of research from knowledge-oriented to benefit-oriented discourages failures and out-of-the-box thinking, which is crucial in the pursuit of knowledge.
Cinnamon misuses the word research which creates a false sense of importance and undermines the truth knowledge seeking of doing research.
Better choices might be: experiment, trial, (etc.)
One might say that which term to use is of little to no importance and is not worth concerning. However, I argue that such a distortion in the fundamental level of language perception would create conflicts in how we think and how we act, which then leads to negative effects on our mindset and motivation toward true research.