The scientists who discover these solutions are my heroes. They spend their lives tangled in these complexities and save actual lives with their work. That's admirable!
It's a game of big numbers, much (very smart) trial and error I suppose, and never finding something meaningful may result in much frustration. Still this has to be done because you simply don't know which path will lead to the solution.
Now if you only do negative research you cannot publish and you if you don;t publish you die.
I wonder how many negative results get repeated because they don't get published. It could save a lot of effort and money publishing negative results.