If I'm honest, I would say this is a problem the mod should solve itself, rather than provide "useless" research topics, make them have something worthwhile besides score points. Otherwise you're just stuffing the research tree for the sake of having more topics.
While I agree, I think that is the intent of X-Com Files in some ways. I've found after playing unsuccessfully over iterations, that "I believe" it is intended to have to skip research junk in order to research the correct stuff fast enough to be successful. The result is research everything the first time playing, learn what the junk is make it somewhat farther in the next play through by skipping a bunch of stuff, and if you don't complete the game, on the 3rd+ play through continue to skip the stuff that is superfluous, you know it in you head from previous playthroughs. There is so much stuff that you get that is also mostly important that you can also use but don't need to research, like many of the weapons, if you get them, use them know what was "good" from the research in the previous playthroughs. I still really like X-Com Files although I agree with your statement that I think there could be some refinement in research topics....
But again, I think that's the intent... you fail the game if you get distracted researching too much junk... like in a real life scenario... the aliens destroy you if you were not focused on the right things.
And, I haven't completed X-Com Files yet, but I think that you can research all the junk in late game when you have more bases and labs to complete it faster.... it 'JUST' fills up my research list way too much.
I understand if this isn't implemented, but it would be a really helpful added feature... the intent would be to unhide junk research later.
