Well, I know at least some researchers simply give the tedious stuff to someone else. You can hire an external group of people (such as my company, I work in this field) and tell them "Check this dataset/program, for common errors." and get back a list of things like "These 30 people report both Non-smoking status and 30 pack-years." You can also have them do things like "Check this paper draft for publication." "Collect these 12 different types of data into a single dataset." "Generate these tens of thousands of forest plots." etc. And yes, sometimes there is a "Convert this database type into this other database type."

Since I'm a computer guy and not a researcher, the data grinding isn't really any more tedious than any other job, and if anyone does acknowledge/coauthor me in a paper, it's a pleasant surprise.

I feel like this is a rather longwinded way of saying comparative advantage though. A shorter answer is to find someone who is relatively better at tedious stuff and give them the task.