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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I predict that high school “research” or publications wouldn’t be nearly as overrated going forward.

The distinguishing feature of true research is its uncertainty and repeated failures. This idea of a high school kid publishing research is oxymoron. We often dread advising even undergrad kids as we have to find a small cute self-contained problem for them (and provide tons of guidance along the way). For those parents who are adamant that your kids came up with the problem themselves. But how to twist it into an executable project takes expertise!

For those magnet or elite high schools with a research class, how many teachers have actually done real research themselves? The vast majority of Ph.D.s never even publish a paper in a decent journal.[/quote]

+100. I'm an R-1 STEM faculty myself and has been part of NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) where I supervised two undergraduate visitors from other universities each summer for three straight summers. These visiting students are generally excellent students, but they were so young -- sophomores and juniors -- that I had to think hard to come up with projects they could do in eight weeks without knocking on my door every day asking questions or burdening my graduate students excessively. They simply don't have the background and training to do anything other than, as PP pointed out, a small, self-contained project that my graduate students could have completed in a day. They weren't capable of reading related literature (I mean, sure they can read the Abstract and Introduction, but once the math kicks in in Section 2 they're lost), nor could they do any theoretical analysis. At best, what they could do was take a method/technique/algorithm my graduate students and I developed, wrote a computer program that tested it, and comment on the simulation results. At worst, the project was not completed by the end of eight weeks and their final presentation posters were filled with things my graduate students and I had created, not them, that we gifted to them.

But a high schooler can just come in and kick ass![/quote]

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