I myself tried a similar exercise (w/Thinking with 3 Pro), seeing if it could come up with an idea that I'm currently writing up that pushes past/sharpens/revises conventional thinking on a topic. It regurgitated standard (and at times only tangentially related) lore, but it did get at the rough idea after I really spoon fed it. So I would suspect that someone being impressed with its "research" output might more reflect their own limitations rather than Gemini's capabilities. I'm sure a relevant factor is variability among fields in the quality and volume of relevant literature, though I was impressed with how it identified relevant ideas and older papers for my specific topic.