Reasoning, problem solving, research validation - at the fundamental outset it is all refinement thinking.
Research is one of those areas where I remain skeptical it is that important because the only valid proof is in the execution outcome, not the compiled answer.
For instance you can research all you want about the best vacuum on the internet but until you try it out yourself you are going to be caught in between marketing, fake reviews, influencers, etc. maybe the science fields are shielded from this (by being boring) but imagine medical pharmas realizing that they can get whatever paper to say whatever by flooding the internet with their curated blog articles containing advanced medical “research findings”. At some point you cannot trust the internet at all and I imagine that might be soon.
I worry especially with the rapidly changing landscape of the amount of generated text in the internet that research will lose a lot of value due to massive amounts of information garbage.
It will be a thing we used to do when the internet was still “real”.