I see many FE-ers either telling others to "Do their own research", or that they have "done their research", but I can never coax any detail from them on what they've done.

Are you prepared to tell us what your research entailed?  What you did, when you did it, what the results of any experimentation were, where the results are/were documented ...?

Is it possibly because no one has actually completed any research? I usually can’t shut up whenever I prove something that goes against mainstream theory. A lot of the considerations out there seem to be baseless and focused on subjective information rather than empirical data. Of course, we had to sift through the wild theories, however, why would we push individuals trying to learn away to find their own information rather than teaching them what we’ve learned?