Not to mention all the bs around science publishing, like not publishing negative results

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Theoretically yes, but in practice, negative results don't usually get published. People don't want to fund negative results. Every fu ding agency is always chasing novelty, and impact. Our scientific community is actually kind of bad with actually doing science. We are lucky if we get negative results widely known these days.

It's not a failure in the usual sense we think about it, no. You were still "technically wrong" in whatever hypothesis you had that was disproven. But the end result is different because theoretically everyone involved cares more about the answer being found, not necessarily that they are the one to do it.

Hell, in cases where whatever you did was later proven incorrect it's usually that whatever you did was the most correct answer for the information we had at the time. Then new information is discovered and often someone else builds off what you did to get this new answer.

No work is wasted if it gives a clearer picture of something. Even if you get disproven, it just means that you found one of the dark parts of the picture. Now sure, people mostly remember the ones that discover the brighter parts of the image. But the whole picture is still made of both the dark and bright parts. We don't just need to know what works, we also need to know for sure what DOESN'T work. Or else we'll never know the real bounds of something.

Now if you don't mind, i'll go back to slamming my head against analysis.