The "Streetlight Effect" and Science

 I will introduce this by quoting Wiki.

The streetlight effect, or the drunkard's search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look. Both names refer to a well-known joke:

A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".

...

Noam Chomsky for instance uses the tale as a picture of how science operates: “Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.” 

Is Chomsky right?

Well, yes, to an extent. Science does not look for supernatural explanations, because it cannot.

But the thing about science is that science has a long, long history of finding those keys. It has found atoms and cells and galaxies and relativity.

In the analogy, the park - where the guy thinks his keys are - that is analogous to religion. He thinks he lost he keys there, out in the darkness. He was wrong. They keys were under the streetlight.

The scientific drunk, looking under the streetlight, has found his keys, and is on his way home. The religious drunk is still bumbling around in the park, in the pitch dark.