I suspect too many people would interpret "research" as (their view of) academic research: no definite goal, no time limit, no constraints. A spike is supposed

I suspect too many people would interpret "research" as (their view of) academic research: no definite goal, no time limit, no constraints. A spike is supposed to be a time-limited investigation of something specific. After that time, either you learned enough to go ahead with implementation, or you didn't, and you have to decide what to do instead. FWIW, I've worked at a few places that used Scrum (my current employer uses less formal processes), and I and some of my co-workers also read HN. I guess I don't know if we're "the type of person that reads HN", though, whatever that is.