Something tells me that you don’t work in science. The process for getting science funding isn’t simple and weeds out useless studies pretty quickly. On average, calls for proposals have about a 15% success rate. So, 15 in every 100 proposals get funded. They are funded after being vetted for usefulness, feasibility, novelty, cost, and other factors.

Since studies are well-vetted before getting funded, studies that sound like they’re simple or useless based on headlines normally make a lot of sense when you read the research results.