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Students who think for themselves are on the right track, when they grope into areas that are not discussed or presented in school as they sense that they are only being given part of the picture, when they reject rigid explanations they have been given of how things work, or explanations that were based on only part of the puzzle and not the whole. This can never be wrong, but they are treated otherwise. The student is expected to accept the rigid explanation and toss away any new pieces of the puzzle they discover because it upsets the rigid explanation. Thus the anger of professors when they are asked questions that seem to counter or contradict the going theory. In truth, more bright students, the thinking type, leave school than stay in, and those that stay in are in pain.
Where most humans like to think of themselves as intelligent creatures, and even the only such creature so gifted in God's creation, they are more often willing to accept the conclusions of others than to think for themselves. This is because emotionally they are children. Look to the discussion on why the planets continue to revolve as an example. It's Newton's law. Once motion starts it continues unless stopped. When there is obvious contradiction to this so-called law, which in fact is not law but only describes behavior, the children are discombobulated. It is not that Newton cannot be challenged, it's that the children cannot think for themselves.
Look about you, at how small children deal with the complexities of life. They ask their parents to explain, and whatever reason is given out becomes the answer, is repeated to other children, and is angrily defended. The child needs the parent there to explain matters, and the emotional overtone of desperation overrides any capacity for logical thought the child may possess. Having been raised to the level of gods, the parents can do no wrong, until adolescence arrives and new gods are clung to with the same desperation - gang leaders, movie stars, athletes. Most adult humans, grownup on the outside only, are still children on the inside, clinging to whomever acts like a self-proclaimed god by either claiming to take care of the adult child or claiming to have the answers.
Scientific principles, once stated by such a god, are not allowed to be challenged unless this is done by another god. No matter how illogical the scientific principle becomes, the precepts of the religion are repeated mindlessly, and any challenge to this devotion meets hostility. How dare you challenge the god's laws! This tendency to behave as a mindless child is most dramatized in scientific communities, where logic and the ability to think matters through is assumed. In stark contrast to what humans expect from their scientists, the adult child prates the laws of their gods and refuses to put obvious contradictions alongside of these laws. They look the other way. They throw insults. They walk off in a huff. Anything but be forced to grow up and think for themselves!