The purpose of the phrase is to be a reminder that the results are mostly likely experimental error. It doesn't block anything, it just reminds everyone what th

The purpose of the phrase is to be a reminder that the results are mostly likely experimental error. It doesn't block anything, it just reminds everyone what the most likely explanation is. If you want to see a good example of this in action, look at the folks who thought they showed neutrinos went faster than light. They constantly kept in mind that the most likely explanation for the data was experimental error, and eventually showed that their experiment had an error. Nothing was "buried", nothing was "blocked", and good science was eventually done.