 Our story begins in the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados, where two first year medical students, a man and his wife, saw something cross the road one day. Initially they suspected it was a squirrel or a ferret, however using the power of Google they were able to figure out it was a mongoose. After discovering the truth about what they saw, they proceeded to witness 10 more mongooses and other students of the couple's medical school claimed to witness these furry creatures also. The fact of the matter is that mongooses are quite common on the island of Barbados, however because they are frequently mistaken for other animals, they are believed to be rare. In actuality, they are usually noticed when one is actively looking for them. In essence, this is what is called the mongoose phenomena, when a seemingly rare phenomenon becomes more common after you are primed to see it. The mongoose phenomena is something which affects all of us in more ways than you can imagine. How? You may be asking? Well, we're about to find out. This is a vial of penicillin. Penicillin is one of the most common antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections. But the truth is that penicillin is an antibiotic which was discovered by accident. Over the years, many biologists have worked with the fungi penicillin, however one fateful day in 1928, a scientist named Alexander Fleming came home from a trip and found that one of his petri dishes that was growing Staphylococcus bacteria had a penicillin mold growing on it. He noticed that this mold was producing some sort of chemical that was inhibiting the bacterial growth around it. This chemical would become known as the penicillin we all know and love when Fleming investigated the mysterious secreted substance. This accidental discovery of a life-saving substance which was hidden in plain sight was the mongoose phenomena in action. This isn't the only medical miracle the mongoose phenomenon has brought us. For a long time, a little something called the Bader-Meinhof phenomena was plaguing the world of medicine. The Bader-Meinhof phenomena basically states that rare events are rare and the knowledge that such rare occurrences do exist cause the observer to see it occur more frequently than it actually occurs. For example, back in high school you may have had a crush on that special guy or girl and depending on how large your high school was, seeing your crush in the hallways may have been a rare occurrence assuming you two didn't share any classes, lunch period, or bus. However, after seeing your crush in the hallways here or there, you may have been primed to see your crush and as a result it may feel like you see or even bump into your crush around your school more than you actually do. This is basically the Bader-Meinhof phenomena at play in your daily life. Many physicians became aware of this postulate and as a result began to dismiss the idea that their patients may be presenting with symptoms of a rare disease. For example, in Susanna Callahan's book, Brain on Fire, My Month of Madness, a psychiatric patient was misdiagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders and rare disorders were ruled out due to their uncommon prevalence. The patient's symptoms were incorrectly attributed to things like partying too much. Eventually, the patient was correctly diagnosed with NMDA receptor encephalitis which affects one out of 1.5 million people every year and luckily made a full recovery demonstrating why it's important to not just rule out a rare diagnosis for being rare. The application of the Mungus phenomena goes way beyond NMDA receptor encephalitis and applies to other disorders once considered incredibly rare like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and schizophrenia. Once considered highly rare, these disorders have been found to have a larger prevalence over the last several decades, another example of some medical mongooses hidden in plain sight. The Mungus phenomena doesn't just have applications within the doctor's office. In various engineering fields, it is considered important to ensure that every possibility is taken into account when trying to tackle challenges, be it designing new circuitry or a new motor engine. With the dawn of the manufacturing era for devices, engineers held a common belief that any device could be created with any atmosphere and any manufacturing equipment, yet many of these manufactured devices had impurities in them. Some engineers suspected that touching the devices or even something like quantum tunneling could be what's causing the impurities. Upon further investigation, it was found that the impurities were just sodium being emitted from a light source in the manufacturing machine which was a seemingly much more rare occurrence. Only through testing was the simple answer to this complex mystery revealed. The sodium was just another Mungus hiding in plain sight. From a philosophical point of view, adopting a postulate of considering a much more rare occurrence or cause of a problem is important in sociology, law, politics, psychology, medicine, and the sciences in general to prevent overlooking ideas which may be of importance. This is only natural as the evolution of philosophy throughout the years has been converging towards the goal of trying to make the best decision in the shortest period of time. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This particular video is based off a new scientific article published in the Galician Medical Journal that will be available to read in the description once it goes live in June 2022 in case if you were wondering. That being said, there are a lot of hidden Munguses out there in the world, but the science verse should not be one of them. In fact, you should subscribe and hit the notification bell so that way you don't miss another video and keep learning about all the beauties of our universe which are hidden in plain sight. As always, have a great day and don't forget to stay tuned for more science videos.