at first, forgive my english .... I'm going to do my best ...
OK thats what I think she did ....
as a writer, as long as you are honest and cleat with your audience its going to be easy for you to get out of trouble. simply, I think she stated that her research went to another direction other than the one she intended to go to. she found herself working out with another problem "HOW KNOWLEDGE IS ARRIVED AT" which made finding solution for problems she wanted to solve out of her reach for now ...
she made the reader understand that and that was her way out of . thank you
the first thing you do when you start falling is to stop falling ;)