That painstaking approach is what led searchers on Wednesday to the elderly couple, who had been overlooked during previous searches.
A misplaced grave marker led searchers seeking the remains of the outlaw Jesse James to exhume the wrong body from a Texas cemetery.
A man who for months refused to cooperate with an investigation into the disappearance of two children from his secretive religious sect has led searchers to two tiny bodies buried in the woods of northern Maine.
"In the Air France case, if things had been done differently, it could have been a couple of months at most," he said, adding that the initial modelling led searchers to look in the wrong place and that experts had learnt a lot since then, partly due to that investigation.
That led searchers to believe the plane could have flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar sighting.
That has led searchers to believe the men are still near the prison in Dannemora.
Mr. Feith, formerly of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that if the pingers did not lead the searchers to the boxes, they might later find the wreckage with the boxes inside.
But that often leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.
The study suggests that self-diagnosis by search engine frequently leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.
It was after dark, about 6 p.m. on Saturday, when a dog belonging to a volunteer led the searchers to Mr. Vracarich's body.
