Look-elsewhere effect

Imagine you have a room with 100 boxes, and you're trying to find a toy inside one of them. You start opening boxes one by one, looking for the toy.

But after opening 50 boxes, you still haven't found the toy, and you start to think it's not in the room. However, you remember that you might have missed something: You haven't checked the boxes you already opened to see if you missed the toy in them.

So you go back and look inside each box again, and this time you find the toy in one of the boxes you previously searched.

This is similar to what scientists call the "look-elsewhere effect." If you're trying to find something in a specific place, after a while, a statistical fluke can make it seem like it's not there, even when it really is.

So, scientists look at other places too, to make sure that the thing they're searching for isn't just hiding somewhere unexpected. By checking other places, they can make sure that their results are accurate and not just a product of chance.