About

Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should is a quote by Jeff Goldblum's character Ian Malcolm in the original Jurassic Park film. Online, the line has become a popular copypasta used to humorously describe bizarre commercial products, similar to the Has Science Gone Too Far? meme.

Origin

In 1993's Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum's character Ian Malcolm criticizes the park's reanimation of dinosaurs with the quote, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" (shown below).

It's unclear when the quote first began seeing use in memes. One of the earliest known examples was uploaded to KnowYourMeme on July 6th, 2009^[2] (shown below). The quote is used in reference to a photoshop of a teen boy edited to look like a velociraptor, taken from the YouTube video "Greatest freakout ever."^[1]

Spread

Over the course of the 2010s, the quote was paired with multiple pictures of bizarre objects and headlines announcing bizarre products. For example, on December 7th, 2014, KnowYourMeme user Abodos^[3] uploaded an image of unknown origin in which the quote was applied in an image macro to two pictures of oddly flavored potato chips (shown below, left). On January 26th, 2015, an unknown Imgur^[4] user applied the quote to KFC's Double Down Dog, gaining over 16,000 views in seven years (shown below, right).

The quote has remained a popular reference into the present day, particularly on Reddit, where it is often used as the title to posts about bizarre products or images. For example, on November 21st, 2021, Redditor Hat-no-its-a-tricorn posted it over a picture of a cat in a vase, gaining over 1,600 points in 6 months in /r/memes (shown below, left).^[5] On April 13th, 2022, Redditor StDeadpool used it to describe a Fruity Pebbles-flavored syrup developed by Mrs. Butterworth, gaining over 6,500 points in /r/funny^[6] in one month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References