Someone notices something not quite right, and raises the alarm.
People start getting involved.
After staring at disconnected facts and chasing red herrings into dead ends, suddenly two facts click together, then three, then four. A pattern emerges. What started as someone's hunch progresses to a likely theory and eventually it's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. It could be. But it also describes an archaeological discovery, a new math theorem, or the development of a promising new anti-virus drug.