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BT Young Scientist - is there something fishy? MOD Note in OP

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    #512
    cookie1977
    Registered Users Posts: 6,794 ✭✭✭cookie1977


    c.p.w.g.w wrote: »
    Is that Jon Snow???
    Turtwig wrote: »
    The empiricist, the journalist or the bastard? Think it's neither.

    It is Jon Snow (The Journalist):

    https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/trump-brexit-creating-most-challenging-time-in-journalism-s-history-jon-snow-1.3355099


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    #513
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    evolving_doors wrote: »
    Well maybe they said 'if you wanna take this all the way son we'll help' . If he didn't break any BTYS rules and can defend his research then how bad.
    There's only 1 person i know of on this thread who spoke to him at the stand, they were former winners, had taught former winners and had experience and knowledge of his project to some extent. Anyway he said he knew his stuff. Ill try and find the exact quote.

    I saw that post and was left unconvinced. That poster also doesn't have arms-length distance from the competition. Some of the contributors on this thread are coming from scientific background themselves, myself included. Some of us have worked in academic laboratories.


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    #514
    screamer
    Registered Users Posts: 6,134 ✭✭✭screamer


    I think it just takes away from the whole imagery of young scientist... Where you imagine kids inventing things or blowing things up in a lab....all in the name of science and their science project. Getting help in the form of outsourcing some work to professionals etc to polish their offerings is not what IMHO young scientist should condone nor allow nay require. I've thought for years now it's just BS with kids fulfilling the dreams of adults.... It's not something I will ever encourage my kids to participate in....As for knowing your stuff....and this is true for any smart kids.... can learn a lot of stuff and rattle it off at will... That's an indicator of being able to learn not actually an indicator of one's own efforts....


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    #515
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    screamer wrote: »
    I think it just takes away from the whole imagery of young scientist... Where you imagine kids inventing things or blowing things up in a lab....all in the name of science and their science project. Getting help in the form of outsourcing some work to professionals etc to polish their offerings is not what IMHO young scientist should condone nor allow nay require

    I think this is a huge part of it. Now, the competition doesn't say much about the natural ability or ingenuity of the winner. It just shows who has the most access to resources.


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    #516
    evolving_doors
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭evolving_doors


    _Dara_ wrote: »
    This is a disingenuous analogy and you know it. No technique is required to use Surveymonkey.

    Well its equally effusive to say that 'undergrads' wouldn't be allowed to do the research... so no-one should.

    For surveymonkey you are using the expertise of the software programmer who created it! For graphing the software compiles the data so you don't need to know how to create the graph or understand formulae.
    Should it be back to pen and paper and first principals?

    _Dara_ wrote: »
    Getting medical scientists at a hospital laboratory working for you is absolutely not something any secondary student could rock up and organise. There is actually a good bit of work required to carry out the experiments required (I know, having worked in a lab and witnessed the time and resources used). I would really question their time and resources being used to help a secondary student out with a project.

    Ok .. well then he had good access.
    The nature of this access we don't know.
    The allocating of time and resources we also don't know.
    Still doesn't mean he broke any BTYS rules!
    Which is the issue at hand here.
    _Dara_ wrote: »
    I also agree with the yardstick someone mentioned that the work done should be easily reproducible by other students
    .

    How can you ensure this.
    'Easily' is a very loose term. You take the access you get. If its highly specialised access and lab work in cork... will it be the same opportunity in say Donegal? No
    If 2 different groups apply to use specialist lab equipment expertise but 1 gets there first and takes up lab time should the other also be allowed the same time subsequently? I don't think it is feasible (desirable maybe, but not always feasible).

    Maybe it's just left at the discretion of the centre director or whatever. I can't see a way of putting a cap on university involvement and allocating every student an equal slot.


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    #517
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    evolving_doors wrote: »
    For surveymonkey you are using the expertise of the software programmer who created it! For graphing the software compiles the data so you don't need to know how to create the graph or understand formulae.
    Should it be back to pen and paper and first principals?

    You're reaaally sticking with this comparison? Really? Alrighty!


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    #518
    Turtwig
    Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    Surveymonkey is accessible to every student; a HP/LC isn't.


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    #519
    cookie1977
    Registered Users Posts: 6,794 ✭✭✭cookie1977


    evolving_doors wrote: »
    Maybe it's just left at the discretion of the centre director or whatever. I can't see a way of putting a cap on university involvement and allocating every student an equal slot.

    It's not that hard. As previously suggested if it cannot be replicated with the average schools scientific equipment then it shouldn't qualify. I go back to the fact it's called the Young Scientists Exhibition not the Parents/Colleagues Exhibition.


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    #520
    josip
    Registered Users Posts: 13,724 ✭✭✭✭josip


    jimmynokia wrote: »
    http://www.thejournal.ie/bt-young-scientist-2-3801071-Jan2018/

    The most dubious part of that article is not actually the part concerning this year's winner but this part:
    2018 is the 54th year of the event, and Scott has been involved since day one. He co-founded the competition with the late Rev Dr Tom Burke, a fellow physics researcher at UCD and his former teacher.

    Tony Scott was not a co-founder with Rev Tom Burke. It was another group of UCD academics that co-founded it with Tom Burke.
    Tony Scott's original involvement was as an administrator and note taker for the founders.
    But when he recognized the potential for the event he did a very good job rewriting the history of the event.
    So it's not really a surprise that there are serious questions to be answered about the judging of projects when the figurehead for the whole event is somewhat disingenuous.


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    #521
    Corkgirl18
    Closed Accounts Posts: 894 ✭✭✭Corkgirl18


    screamer wrote: »
    I think it just takes away from the whole imagery of young scientist... Where you imagine kids inventing things or blowing things up in a lab....all in the name of science and their science project. Getting help in the form of outsourcing some work to professionals etc to polish their offerings is not what IMHO young scientist should condone nor allow nay require. I've thought for years now it's just BS with kids fulfilling the dreams of adults.... It's not something I will ever encourage my kids to participate in....As for knowing your stuff....and this is true for any smart kids.... can learn a lot of stuff and rattle it off at will... That's an indicator of being able to learn not actually an indicator of one's own efforts....

    Despite the controversy it still is an amazing achievement to even get to the RDS stage for all the participants. There are still plenty of groups of kids that do the work themselves or with just a little guidance and win prizes. Its a great experience for students and they learn so much up there.
    As I said in a previous post, I do find it disheartening that there isn't a level playing field but its not fair to tar all kids with the same brush.


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    #522
    TheAnalyst_
    Registered Users Posts: 1,371 ✭✭✭TheAnalyst_


    Still doesn't mean he broke any BTYS rules!
    He broke the European young scientist rules which you would imagine means he broke the Irish rules given that the competitions are linked.


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    #523
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    TheAnalyst_ wrote: »
    He broke the European young scientist rules which you would imagine means he broke the Irish rules given that the competitions are linked.

    Apparently he didn't. They have different rules.


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    #524
    cookie1977
    Registered Users Posts: 6,794 ✭✭✭cookie1977


    Corkgirl18 wrote: »
    ...I do find it disheartening that there isn't a level playing field but its not fair to tar all kids with the same brush.

    I dont think anyone is doing that at all in this thread.


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    #525
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    Mardy Bum wrote: »
    Apparently he didn't. They have different rules.

    The winner of the BT Young Scientist always goes through to the European comp. So it makes no sense to choose a winner whose project doesn't comply with the rules of the European competition.


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    #526
    fly_agaric
    Registered Users Posts: 4,847 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    These sorts of competitions are never going to be a level playing field, that seems a bit of a pipe-dream. Not a popular thing to say I imagine but what resources a school has + what it teaches outside of mandatory bits of the curriculum depends strongly on how rich (and of course educated and dedicated to little Mary's schooling - is that nicer!) the parents are. Education has always been pretty woefully funded by the state at the primary and secondary levels.

    Some kids will also have parents and relatives working or researching in STEM areas and will have a leg up from that but that's just the way it is. I had a lot of interest in science as a kid and went on to study it in 3rd level...by an astounding co-incidence one of my parents was a scientist. So it goes. However having certain students able to access resources and equipment of 3rd level labs for the experiments in their extra-curricular projects for competitions like Young Scientist + others not, purely because of their contacts seems to make that much worse.

    At least with maths or computer science type projects the tools of the trade will a standard pc/laptop that can cope with Linux and some other open source or free programming tools!


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    #527
    evolving_doors
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭evolving_doors


    _Dara_ wrote: »
    I saw that post and was left unconvinced. That poster also doesn't have arms-length distance from the competition. Some of the contributors on this thread are coming from scientific background themselves, myself included. Some of us have worked in academic laboratories.

    I hear ya. But if he says the kid knew what he was talking about, then that's a better counter example to any other poster on here who claims the mum/college did all the thinking and directing for the project.

    Coming from a scientific background is useful but we're all still stumbling around surmising about winning unfairly etc. When we 100% do not know what rules were broken, if any.
    We don't know what his written proposal was, don't know what his acknowledgements were either.


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    #528
    jmcc
    Registered Users Posts: 7,368 ✭✭✭jmcc


    There was a time when an issue like this could be settled with a PR company sending a press release to some presstitutes to recycle. Times have definitely changed as there are well qualified people commenting on Social Media about this and prior research papers can be accessed with the click of a mouse button. The similarity to previous research and the family connections in this project are somewhat unsettling and handwaving by random people and no hard quotes from the actual judges make the denials look even worse.

    Regards...jmcc


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    #529
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    evolving_doors wrote: »
    Coming from a scientific background is useful but we're all still stumbling around surmising about winning unfairly etc. When we 100% do not know what rules were broken, if any.
    We don't know what his written proposal was, don't know what his acknowledgements were either.

    Well, someone high up in the comp has said he has PhD-level scientific knowledge. Which just doesn't tally with his "we're making science too complicated" comment. Anyone with PhD-level knowledge would know demonstrating antimicrobial activity of a substance on a petri dish is the first step in a very long process. People aren't complicating science for fun and anyone who has worked in a lab or has level 10 scientific knowledge (which apparently he does despite still being at 2nd level) knows that.


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    #530
    Martina1991
    Registered Users Posts: 2,540 ✭✭✭Martina1991


    evolving_doors wrote:
    So... he got somebody trained to do the tests he required. Is that breaking the rules? If I use surveymonkey to get and graph survey results am I breaking the rules? Do I have to use a pen and paper and hard copy surveys? No.

    Surveymonkey is a free to use public service for anyone.

    I don't know if it was against the rules to have medical scientists carry out the testing for him.

    But if it was allowed, his access to a hospital lab was more than likely due to his mothers connections.

    I work in a hospital lab. I've never heard or seen of any second level student being allowed to use our facilities. There are guarda clearance and patient confidentiality barriers to overcome. The only student projects allowed are the 4th year undergrads or M.Sc.


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    #531
    evolving_doors
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭evolving_doors


    fly_agaric wrote: »
    These sorts of competitions are never going to be a level playing field, that seems a bit of a pipe-dream. Not a popular thing to say I imagine but what resources a school has + what it teaches outside of mandatory bits of the curriculum depends strongly on how rich (and of course educated and dedicated to little Mary's schooling - is that nicer!) the parents are. Education has always been pretty woefully funded by the state at the primary and secondary levels.

    Some kids will also have parents and relatives working or researching in STEM areas and will have a leg up from that but that's just the way it is. I had a lot of interest in science as a kid and went on to study it in 3rd level...by an astounding co-incidence one of my parents was a scientist. So it goes. However having certain students able to access resources and equipment of 3rd level labs for the experiments in their extra-curricular projects for competitions like Young Scientist + others not, purely because of their contacts seems to make that much worse.

    At least with maths or computer science type projects the tools of the trade will a standard pc/laptop that can cope with Linux and some other open source or free programming tools!

    Yup it's a middle/upper class privilege no doubt. Same as TY work experience, doctor mummy or solicitor daddy get you the work experience with their colleagues.
    Brilliant, great, wouldn't begrudge them.
    Should kids from different backgrounds be provided equal access and support. Sure. Who are the gatekeepers though.

    Is 'having a bit of pull' fair in Ireland. Yup if its you.


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    #532
    jmcc
    Registered Users Posts: 7,368 ✭✭✭jmcc


    fly_agaric wrote: »
    At least with maths or computer science type projects the tools of the trade will a standard pc/laptop that can cope with Linux and some other open source or free programming tools!
    Based on past events where projects are Computer Science based, some of the judging might not be up to speed with that.

    Regards...jmcc


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    #533
    fly_agaric
    Registered Users Posts: 4,847 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    evolving_doors wrote: »
    Yup it's a middle/upper class privilege no doubt. Same as TY work experience, doctor mummy or solicitor daddy get you the work experience with their colleagues.
    Brilliant, great, wouldn't begrudge them.
    Should kids from different backgrounds be provided equal access and support. Sure. Who are the gatekeepers though.

    Is 'having a bit of pull' fair in Ireland. Yup if its you.

    Yes, there's not much you can do about that.
    A public education system + the "points race" is supposed to equalise it somewhat, but would take more money, resources + effort than available to level out such a tilted playing field.


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    #534
    evolving_doors
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭evolving_doors


    Martina1991 wrote: »
    Surveymonkey is a free to use public service for anyone.

    A college lab can be a free resource too if you are a student and ask for help. Sometimes they say no, sometimes they say yes.
    Martina1991 wrote: »
    I don't know if it was against the rules to have medical scientists carry out the testing for him.
    Edit : see below.

    Martina1991 wrote: »
    But if it was allowed, his access to a hospital lab was more than likely due to his mothers connections.
    How bad! Any laws broken?

    Here's some advice given on they're site
    Ask for help with obtaining your resources – bring your parents and peers in to help you with this.





    Interestingly they also state this
    Tests, measurements
    and experiments:

    These should only be used if they are relevant to your research and if you are capable of doing and understanding them yourself.
    http://btyoungscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BTWL0780-Data-Collection.pdf

    Hmmmmmmm.








    Martina1991 wrote: »
    I work in a hospital lab. I've never heard or seen of any second level student being allowed to use our facilities. There are guarda clearance and patient confidentiality barriers to overcome. The only student projects allowed are the 4th year undergrads or M.Sc.

    I hear ya. Although in saying that we have students who have no problem getting work experience in hospitals in transition year (although hospitals are clamping down nmore now).

    Ya just going by the advice from BTYS above it would appear that there are questions to be answered about who did what lab work.


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    #535
    jmcc
    Registered Users Posts: 7,368 ✭✭✭jmcc


    evolving_doors wrote: »

    Interestingly they also state this
    Tests, measurements
    and experiments:

    These should only be used if they are relevant to your research and if you are capable of doing and understanding them yourself.

    http://btyoungscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BTWL0780-Data-Collection.pdf

    Hmmmmmmm.

    Ya just going by the advice from BTYS above it would appear that there are questions to be answered about who did what lab work.
    That's a major problem right there. All the spin on this has been about how great the guy is for doing this project but that section above is a potential infraction of the rules, especially if it turns out that he is incapable of doing the experiments due to their complexity or due to regulations about handling pathogens.

    Regards...jmcc


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    #536
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    Anyhoo, this lad will remain the winner. But hopefully behind the scenes, it’s being discussed and maybe things will change.


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    #537
    Deep_learning
    Registered Users Posts: 42 ✭Deep_learning


    I've long been dubious of the performance of schools such as Coláiste Choilm and Kinsale Community school in BTYS.


    For example, it's interesting to note in the link below that not a single student from either Coláiste Choilm or Kinsale Community school qualified for the Irish Science Olympiad.


    http://castel.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IrEUSO-2017-Finalists.pdf


    Surely, if all these students were all as brilliant in science as their projects suggest, loads of them would be qualifying for the Irish Science Olympiad by scoring high marks in science and maths in the Junior Cert? Yet, not a single student from either school scored high marks in maths and science in a state examination in order to qualify for the olympiad.

    Strange that.


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    #538
    kaymin
    Registered Users Posts: 1,526 ✭✭✭kaymin


    jmcc wrote: »
    That's a major problem right there. All the spin on this has been about how great the guy is for doing this project but that section above is a potential infraction of the rules, especially if it turns out that he is incapable of doing the experiments due to their complexity or due to regulations about handling pathogens.

    Regards...jmcc

    More hypothetical waffle. A quick visit to the HSE site indicates most people have MRSA on their skin and healthy people would generally not fall ill from it. Its the old, weak and already ill that have a vulnerability to it. So there seems little reason to think he could not do the experiments himself. Does anyone have hard evidence to the contrary?


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    #539
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    kaymin wrote: »
    More hypothetical waffle. A quick visit to the HSE site indicates most people have MRSA on their skin and healthy people would generally not fall ill from it. Its the old, weak and already ill that have a vulnerability to it. So there seems little reason to think he could not do the experiments himself. Does anyone have hard evidence to the contrary?

    MRSA cultures grown in the lab would be more dangerous because there’s a huge amount of it contained within each universal when it’s grown up. Ill-trained, one could introduce it to the community where an immunocompromised person could come in contact with it.


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    #540
    kaymin
    Registered Users Posts: 1,526 ✭✭✭kaymin


    _Dara_ wrote: »
    MRSA cultures grown in the lab would be more dangerous because there’s a huge amount of it contained within each universal when it’s grown up. Ill-trained, one could introduce it to the community where an immunocompromised person could come in contact with it.

    I cant imagine the level of training needed is extensive - clean the utensils after use? Can't be difficult. It seems to me this 'MRSA is highly dangerous' angle is being used to unfairly justify the claim he couldn't do the experiments himself.


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    #541
    _Dara_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,971 ✭✭✭_Dara_


    kaymin wrote: »
    I cant imagine the level of training needed is extensive - clean the utensils after use? Can't be difficult. It seems to me this 'MRSA is highly dangerous' angle is being used to unfairly justify the claim he couldn't do the experiments himself.

    I’ve worked at containment levels 2 and 3. 3 is a lot more stringent than 2 but 2 still needs a good knowledge of sterile technique for starters. This kid might have that with a microbiologist mother though. But that’s just the start. To ensure there’s no contamination, you’ll need plenty of lab training. Even in a science degree, you’ll be dealing with level 1 stuff for most or all of your degree. No schoolkid will be let near anything other than level 1. And his poster seems to confirm that he did not deal with MRSA himself.

    Why do you think things are ascribed containment levels if you think they are just meaningless? They’re not for fun. I had to be vaccinated against the level 3 stuff I was working with before I was allowed anywhere near them.


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