I think it’s important to understand what the author means by “software engineering research”. If I understand it correctly, he means research about the discipline of software engineering, not the output of engineering. So research on analyzing agile and waterfall approaches would be “software engineering research”, a programming languages paper would not be. A paper on whether static typing reduces defects is a grey area to me—-I think it’s SE research, but I’m not sure.
It’s clear that there’s been lots of progress in technology: in networking, in databases, in compilers, etc. It’s just that none of that was substantially influenced by research on the process of software engineering.
The problem is obtaining solid data and not falling on cargo cult. If there’s a paper showing that static typing is safer, but is assuming A, B and C, it can be very easy to end up with a lot of people saying that only static typing should be used in every imaginable situation.
Applying the results of research on these kind of practices can be incredibly difficult. Engineering processes are not a hard science…
It’s clear that there’s been lots of progress in technology: in networking, in databases, in compilers, etc. It’s just that none of that was substantially influenced by research on the process of software engineering.