Question: There are lots of studies and researches going on about cancer what will ensure that you will be able to beat everyone else and find a cure to cancer?

Ee Lyn Lim answered on 20 Jun 2013:

It’s not really a race! 🙂 It’s true that the person who finds the cure will become famous and people will remember them for their work, but that doesn’t mean that we all treat it as a competition and keep all our work secret from everyone else. It’s just the opposite – scientist very often work together, we tell each other what we’ve found, and see if we can think of good ideas to work on next. We can share a lot of stuff – machines, chemicals, even cells and animals. We’re doing science because we want to solve the problem and help people, so the faster it gets solved the better. Also, in science it’s very important to record everything you do – all the experiments, and all the results. That means that in the end we can quite easily tell who did which part of the work, and nobody will be forgotten!