Reply to How can teenagers create such science projects?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. The science fair kids always have mentors. Usually they are paid and do most of the work while explaining to the kids what’s going on. I learned this when someone my DD looked up to placed in a science fair.

Now I know another kid who placed in last year’s state science fair who did not have a mentor. Or so he says. Dad is in tech. Son is really not that intellectual and cannot tell how why he started the project or what he did. I suspect dad (works at Microsoft) did it.[/quote]

People that work at Microsoft are allowed to have kids and they're allowed to teach their kids about data and data collection and how to clean up data and how to manipulate data and how to analyze data.  Presumably someone taught the person working at Microsoft those skills and they are allowed to teach them to someone else.

Pretty sure Venus Williams is allowed to teach her kid how to play tennis and Taylor Swift is allowed to teach her kid how to compose a song and Stephen King is allowed to teach his kid how to write a story.[/quote]

But Venus Williams would not be allowed to go play a game for her kid so kid can win a medal, right? There’s no equivalence here! [/quote]

That and Venus Williams started training at the age of 4 and played in her first official pro tournament was at 14. It took her 10 years to train to that level and I’m sure it was 40 hours a week or more.

Are you telling me your kid started data science, IoT, web technologies and environmental science in elementary school and got to professional level at the age of 14?

Spare me from this BS. I know how long it takes.[/quote]
The level of time required to become world class in one of the most popular activities in the world is very different from the level of time required to be able to do research that wins a competition for high school students [/quote]

No. Research is serious business that takes years to learn the trade. From acquiring basic competence in the subject, to being able to even read conference/journal papers to understand what has been done, that typically requires at least a few graduate-level classes. The individual then needs to come up with ideas that can potentially advance the state of the art, realize those ideas by designing/performing experiments or developing a theory, and turn the results obtained into publishable papers that can fend off criticisms from reviewers. That's a long journey filled with blood, sweat, and frustration dotted with occasional Eureka moments. Can a high schooler do it in an independent fashion? Sure, there are Bill Gates, Terrence Tao, and the likes among us, but they are 1 in 100,000. Not 1000 in 100,000 who apply to top schools each year and claim to have done published research.[/quote]

You need to relax.  There are over 3 and 1/2 million kids that come out of high school every year and a very small percentage of them are interested in science research at all.  Of the very small number some do poor quality projects, some do average quality and some do high quality projects.   You've got yourself in a snit over a tiny amount of high school kids.

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It's not the number of kids involved, nor the quality of the research produced, that's the issue. It's ethic and honesty. Are you okay with kids unethically claiming they have published research papers when in reality all they did was the equivalent to washing test tubes? They barely knew the subject, did not contribute a single ounce of thought, did not write a single sentence for the papers, and yet are dishonestly listed as co-authors because their parents pay for the opportunities or hook them up with friends/colleagues willing to look the other way?[/quote]

Can you please Google order of authorship on scientific papers.  There are hundreds of different scientific publications and they all have different guidelines and rules, but in general someone that makes a small contribution  comes at the end of the list.  No one with any knowledge would be confusing that person with any kind of lead researcher.[/quote]

Order of authorship depends on scientific areas. Some do alphabetical, some put corresponding author at the very end, some order based on decreasing contributions. The problem is not the ordering. It's the fact that being co-authors makes kids seem more impressive than they really are. Wow, this 16-year-old published a paper in journal of XYZ! When in reality they were merely cleaning data or doing other mindless, mundane work. Work that could have been done by any kid.[/quote]

Not if the kid is presenting the entire research project as his own and as a solo effort.  That’s just blatant cheating.[/quote]

+1. You nailed it. Many kids describe the work in their college apps as "I did this, I did that," completely downplaying the assisting PhD students, postdocs, and/or research scientists as if there weren't even there. Some would go so far in stretching the truth as "One day I came up with this idea of ...." AOs are not trained to recognize such exaggerations. Heck, even faculty members in the same department but different sub-areas might not recognize them. How many kids and their parents would actually admit "All I did was cleaning test tubes or moving files between computers or cleaning data by deleting rows in an Excel spreadsheet"?[/quote]

Why don't you find some colleges to apply to where the admissions officers are not morons?  You think they have no familiarity with science kids?   Pretty sure they know that the prima ballerina in local production of swan lake is not going to be doing a world ballet tour.  Doesn't mean they don't value the progress of the ballerina and they might even want her in their college.[/quote]

AOs are generally an astute bunch in smelling out fakeries from a mile away. But they can't possibly come close to knowing every area of human endeavors (no one can, obviously), especially with scientific research.

When a kid's description of their research involves a bunch of technical jargons, do you think AOs would say "Nah, this result has been known since the 90s," or "No way, this result is too good to be true under this experimental condition," or "I doubt your professor would let you use this 3-million dollar equipment to do what you just described"?

The more likely AOs' reaction would be "Okay, I don't know what the hell you're saying, but I'm gonna take your word for it. Great discovery, excellent description, I'm gonna give you the max score on ECs." The kid might be discovering that water is wet but through the use of fancy technical jargons plus some good writing, they could easily create a mirage.[/quote]

Not in my experience and not what I've seen written by experts in college admissions.  At least for a very competitive college they're going to want verification.  They  want to see top grades and top rigor in science and math for years, recommendations from math or science teachers and from mentors.

If it is a top institution, some one off poorly verified project done over a random summer is not going to cut it.  They have familiarity with some of the well-known and established organizations and certainly with high schools that have run science research programs for some time.    If they are not familiar with the competition or the organization or the publication, they're going to seek out some information.[/quote]

The Regeneron grand prize is $250K and the Nobel prize shared by 3 people is about $333K.  The Regeneron prize has enough weight to get you into where ever you want to go. Any of the other Regeneron winners also have similar weight - you don't pass one of these up. You don't question one of these people. You just verify they won.  The thread is mainly about are the submissions/winners legit?[/quote]

Regeneron gave a $50,000 prize to someone who just copied pictures from a published paper.

If they just barely caught that, they're almost surely missing a lot of more subtle fraud.

Regeneron is an advertising campaign for the company. The whole contest is a sham. [/quote]

Ikr?  You should probably not bother with it.[/quote]

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