There's a lot of legitimate UI research. What foreground/background colors are readable (white/black and black/white perform about on par, with yellow/blue being the best IIRC), destructive actions shouldn't be next to constructive (at the minimum there should be a separator between 'Save' and 'Quit'), ...
Faffing about with hamburger menus and A/B testing isn't 'UX' research though.
Faffing about with hamburger menus and A/B testing isn't 'UX' research though.