I don't know if this is an example of what you're asking. In mathematical logic, the Hilbert Program of the 1920's intended to come up with a finitary consistency proof and a decision procedure for analysis and set theory. Many luminaries including Hilbert himself, Bernays, Ackermann, von Neumann, etc. gathered in Göttingen for this purpose. Ackermann in 1925 published a consistency proof for analysis (that turned out to be incorrect) and many other promising results emerged. Then in 1931, Gödel's incompleteness theorem shut the whole thing down. Some valid theorems came out of it, but the program as a whole had to be (in some interpretations) completely abandoned.
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