Thats the basic nature of research. A lot of DARPA’s work is similarly dead ended.
It’s the game changer hit it out of the park home runs that make it all worthwhile.
And NIH has hit quite a few out if the park. A15% success rate in innovative and applied research is better than average in my experience.
I consider a 1 in 10 success rate pretty darn good in applied research. We are able to do the things we do because the 15% success justifies the investment in the 85% not so successful that maintains the critical mass of our R&D system. Sure there are lots of seemingly worthless and frivolous projects that need to be cut out and should be cut out. However, I can give at least one example of a research project that I at the time considered the epitome of frivolous and absurd but turned out to have some pretty consequential and far reaching impacts. You never know when and where the next great break through may come from
Have recently read quite a few of NIH research papers and have been absolutely blown away by the quality and important usefulness of some of the work.
Failures that become known also help in the knowledge base - especially if they were meticulous so you can see why it failed, or what it was unable to distinguish that it ‘should’ have.
That said, there is still a lot of stuff which should be way down the priority list that continues to get a lot of attention and funding.