Grand well-funded intellectual projects often end in dead ends

Evidence

There is a certain sort of triumphalist history of European culture that presents the progress of the arts and sciences in terms of smooth, incremental gains. In this progress every grand intellectual endeavour inevitably brings results that benefit the world. But such a selective version of intellectual history neglects the past importance of grand projects, supported by the best minds and often by copious funding that still went nowhere. Cultural history is (or at least should be) full of cul-de-sacs, such as the labours of Joseph Justus Scaliger, James Ussher, Count Jean Potocki and others to establish a universal chronology that would confirm the apparent time-frame set out by the Bible, or the attempts to square the circle, by Nicholas of Cusa and others. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 134