All research and progress boils down to Brownian Loop Soup. Someone/something having a result showing a connection does not mean they have explored "the way" to do it.

Not even the most elegant mathematically perfect solution is guaranteed to be the best way to crack a problem, or provide a definite answer.

Meandering paths through whatever we set our minds to do and serendipity is the way of human beings for the past few hundred millennia.