When I was studying chemistry in college, the favorite phrase was "A month in the lab can save you an hour in the library". I'm still guilty of falling into the trap, but I definitely try not to. Another phrase along the same line was, "There's nothing new in chemistry", meaning you haven't searched hard enough for the answer. In my working life it gets frustrating when people try and fail and assume something will never work without ever having started in the right place. It is some people's nature to have low activation energy starting projects and then burn it all out without getting a satisfactory result. Luckily there are people here to answer questions when they get asked. It probably saves a lot of 911 calls for experiments gone wrong.