This incredibly low-effort and unoriginal meme is going around again. Whoever came up with it has never done #science for a living, and I guess neither have the vast majority of people who repost it.

#Questioning *nature* is how you do science, trying to figure out something new about the way the world works. Sometimes, yes, that involves questioning existing science, but not very often. Much more commonly—99% or more of the time—scientists are building on each other's work. Shoulders of giants and all that, without Newton's sarcasm.

In my line of work, for example, I often question whether a particular #mutation in a particular #gene increases #responsivess to a particular #drug in a particular type of #cancer. I don't question whether #chemotherapy in general is worth doing for cancer patients, or whether genes in general influence drug metabolism in general, because I don't have to. Other people have already done that work, and if I want I can go back and read how they did it.

*Very* rarely I think they did it wrong, and I will of course bring that up to my clients. Even then, it will be about specific cases relevant to the mutation, drug, and #tumor type at hand—not about the idea that relations between #genetics, cancer, and the #treatment thereof *exist*. Not because someone's paying me not to, or because I'm afraid of the answers I'd get, or any of that nonsense, but simply because there's no point.

Scientists could spend all our time trying to prove each other wrong, of course. Every once in a while we do, both because it improves our knowledge, and yes, because that's one of the best ways to get a paper published in a major journal. But if that were all or even most of the practice of science, nothing else would ever get done.

Do you want that outcome? A lot of people seem to. When they're lying in a hospital bed dying of something we could have treated if we'd been able to research it properly, I bet they won't.