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!
And may those scientists who devote their life to stuff like this, but who will never find a solution, be (y)our heroes as well!
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.
They're too are my heroes. Those who never find a solution still did the work, traversed the other paths - which is a necessary part of figuring out which path is the correct one - and quite often, what they saw on those paths may lead someone else to solve some other problem in the future!
This is why big time negative results that lead to closing a big path that may have wasted humanity huge research time should also get rewards and grants.
Now if you only do negative research you cannot publish and you if you don;t publish you die.
