dredgery
Academic, archival research in which menial drudgery take the form of slogging through (or dredging) all sorts of uninteresting stuff intending to find, say, a laundry list proving that Einstein or Michelangelo or Barbra Streisand was really a woman, but which never yields such a nugget of inspiration.
Larry failed to proved Beatrix Potter gave birth to Harry, so his afternoon of searching in the Hall of Records was pointless dredgery.