More Words, Deeper Hole

Well, the process of discovery and the chains of coincidence and hard work that go into it is an important part of the start of Asimov's The Gods Themselves. James Blish's The Frozen Year is about an (International Geophysical Year) polar expedition, seeking out Martian or asteroid belt meteorites that are easier to spot in Antarctica than other places, too, although the conclusion makes some leaps maybe stronger than the evidence collected would suggest.

Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud is similarly a taut story of astronomical observations and deduction up until the alien entity arrives, and Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama is effectively a commando archeology trip, even if the process of finding conclusions aren't drawn. There's much in 2010 that's characters sitting around a computer screen watching confused wiggles of ambiguous data from remote sensors, too.

Or have I misunderstood the question? (In any case these are certainly ancient books; the newest of them is a quarter-century old. I just don't know the modern field well enough.)