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"?
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.
