Why haven’t scientists worked it out yet?
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An ELI5 equivalent might be trying to get rid of weeds in your garden.
1) If you physically remove only the parts you can see, there could still be roots remaining that will allow the weeds to grow back.
2) You can try to physically remove all the roots (e.g. by digging deeper/bigger holes), but this could become difficult and time consuming if the roots are long and extensive.
3) You can poison the weeds, but there’s the risk that you could also poison the ‘good’ plants in your garden if you just splash the poison on indiscriminately.
4) Different treatments might work better for different weeds. Some weeds might be too big or bulky to physically remove and NEED to be poisoned. Some weeds might need multiple approaches over a long period of time to fully kill and remove them.
5) The closer that weeds are to your ‘good’ plants, the more careful you have to be to make sure it’s only the weeds that are killed. This increases the time and difficulty, and runs greater risk that you won’t destroy all of the weeds.
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