Python vs R for research

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my biologist friend wants to learn Python or R for actual science/research. I'm a dumb CS major so I barely know anything about how they use Python and R. All I know is R is popular in statistics and Python is popular in Data Science. But is data science the same as whatever research biologists do?
Should I just teach him the basics up to OOP or do they use specific Python/R libraries he should learn about? any recommended resources for this?