What alternative do you propose, and what "actual convincing research" shows that your approach is actually beneficial?

In the context of software engineering approaches, "What research exists?" is basically a conversation killer of a question. The scientific method, when applied to medium-number, complex-interaction systems like most business settings, offers very little in the way of predictive power. At best, it may illuminate some dynamics and raise some questions to ask, but rarely predict the future in the way that hard sciences research does. This is why, if you a predisposed to label something like TDD as "cargo cult", you will likely never find any published research to be "convincing".

But that said, a simple search for "published tdd research" turns up quite a few hits, including this one from Microsoft right at the top: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/ese/nagappan_tdd....