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Scandal at America's top science fair

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Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#211

Post by riku_iki »

adr1an wrote: post #205

I will take the liberty to expreas my most profound cynicism. Didn't Google fake some of its AI showcases recently? Didn't Apple fake stuff about their iPhone on some presentation? I believe this goes beyond a young person "mistake". And no. It's not just to the universities. There are plenty of institutions involved. There are commercial successes from technology corporations to take inspiration from. The lack of co…

you can start with politicians who win the race using their lying skills and who decide our policies and future.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#212

Post by uneekname »

uneekname wrote: post #10

I was a finalist at the 2017 ISEF and it was quite an experience. A lot of super smart kids there and we all had fun living it up in Los Angeles. There was a stark contrast between those of us who had designed our projects completely ourselves, and those who had significant mentors/lab affiliations. No hate to high schoolers getting valuable STEM experience at local universities, but Regeneron should do more to diffe…

Correction: Regeneron is the sponsor, it is the Society for Science that is responsible. When I was there the sponsor was Intel, so I didn't immediately recognize the meaning of "Regeneron"

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#213

Post by jimmydddd »

MerManMaid wrote: post #103
anon291 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have many good schools but unlike most places we also have extremely great schools. So while it's pretty easy to fund a good education for everyone, there's always going to be competition for the best.

>there's always going to be competition for the best. Agreed but surely we could come up with a form of competition more fair than something which heavily favors the wealthy and/or familial alumni.

From what I've read, the alternative they've come up with is favoring certain ethnic backgrounds over others. But the courts are currently not favoring that approach. So they may have to go back to looking at grades and test scores.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#214

Post by alex-korr »

nsajko wrote: post #77
anal_reactor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, many cultures don't see honesty as a value on its own. In Polish there's a word "frajer" which is an offensive term for someone who got cheated or didn't take advantage of a situation. The logic is that, if the society as a whole is dishonest, then it doesn't make sense to be a martyr recognized by no-one, and it's better to make sure you take care of yourself first.

Fun fact: that's actually a Yiddish word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frajer English translation: dope, sucker. As in there's a sucker born every minute : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_...

The word is widely used in Russian as well.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#215

Post by autoexec »

rerdavies wrote: post #146
fransje26 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dutch youth is spending an average (!) of 5 hours and 45 minutes per day on digital media. I was wondering if something like that was at play. Well, here are some hard statistics. Thank you for that. > That's some serious amount of time It's a worrying and disturbing amount of time. Now, the question is: is more time wasted on digital media than was wasted on TV in the past? And secondly: does the current TV time c…

And thirdly: would anyone complain if children were spending 5 hours and 45 minutes a day reading books? Watching television was much more toxic than digital media. Network television spoon fed content targeted at a lowest common denominator to everyone, that content was consumed passively. It was horrible. Digital media allows active selection of content, and provides access to much higher quality information, if yo…

> Watching television was much more toxic than digital media.

That's a wild take. TV didn't spy on you while you watched it. TV didn't send you a steady stream of notifications that sounded alarms or vibrated in your pocket at various hours even if you weren't at home just to make you feel like you were missing out and to keep you checking back in. TV didn't have microtransactions or lootboxes either. TV wasn't pay to win.

TV didn't have ads targeted to an individual. Ads on TV could only be targeted to a market and to broad demographics (kids before school starts and during cartoons, women in the day and while soaps were airing, etc) and there was some regulation on the kinds of advertising you show children and programing intended for children was developed with oversight from the network. Elsagate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate) was impossible on television. There was too much perl clutching over what kids could see on TV, but these days parents hand their kids a tablet with youtube and they are at the mercy of an algorithm that's designed to show them the most extreme and divisive content.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#216

Post by autoexec »

mihaaly wrote: post #97

> These actions, while serious, should not define Pai’s entire life Too late for that. Very late. Unluckily his mind is set on pretending too much. Which is ubiquitous and actually encouraged in life to a great degree (not like this should be an excuse for adapting). What is not late is to seek a different career in life. Be an influencer, praised youtuber or a political adviser perhaps, but the science world needs m…

I wish reality were closer to how you see it, but there are people who do far worse to their reputation, but continue to have careers. In the US a doctor can tell their patients that the diseases they have are caused by demon sperm and that alien technology is in their medications/treatments and that doctor still gets to keep their practice/medical license. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Immanuel) Police officers can lie, steal, rape, or murder forcing them to resign or causing them to get fired, but they have no problems getting another job as a police officer the next county over (https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/fired-cops-routinel...). Scientists can repeatedly fabricate evidence for corporations and have long careers doing so. The scientists hired by the tobacco industry to lie are also used by the oil industry and are deciding what chemicals are safe to put in our food (https://publicintegrity.org/politics/food-safety-scientists-...)

This guy probably has a long and profitable career as a scientist ahead of him.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#217

Post by mihaaly »

autoexec wrote: post #216
mihaaly wrote: post #97

> These actions, while serious, should not define Pai’s entire life Too late for that. Very late. Unluckily his mind is set on pretending too much. Which is ubiquitous and actually encouraged in life to a great degree (not like this should be an excuse for adapting). What is not late is to seek a different career in life. Be an influencer, praised youtuber or a political adviser perhaps, but the science world needs m…

I wish reality were closer to how you see it, but there are people who do far worse to their reputation, but continue to have careers. In the US a doctor can tell their patients that the diseases they have are caused by demon sperm and that alien technology is in their medications/treatments and that doctor still gets to keep their practice/medical license. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Immanuel ) Police off…

Right. The way the science community carry out their activity is increasingly shameful, I was thinking about an idealistic situation still, that is right.

He will definitely have a fruitful career in a science leadership position, possibly not only in China.

Scary examples. Scary. It is increasinlgy benefitial to live life with a great deal of ignorance just to feel worthwhile getting out of the bed in the morning and put one tiny straw into the big haystack of the humanity, while others put it on fire all the time for their own personal warmth.

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#218

Post by Xelbair »

thriftwy wrote: post #188
Xelbair wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The child is nothing to be blamed for, it is a 100% problem of the organizers. If I,as a child, stole 50k USD, surely i would get thrown into the jail, or juvie. >For a 17 years old, even throwing together such work is already an worthwhile result. Teens is a golden age of compilation and remixing. There's difference between remixing and outright stealing with intent to deceive, for monetary gain. Even more so when…

This case only became severe because they chose to award these money to compilated work with no attribution. If they didn't reward this specific work it would be a non-issue. So by induction blame lies on the offering part. Doing subpar work is not stealing. Come on, we've been through "intellectual property" already and now this.

you are doing some heavy mental gymnastics right now. What he did was a crime, reward or not, and he should be old enough to understand why that was immoral and possible consequences of it.

aren't you affiliated with him somehow?

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#219

Post by poulpy123 »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #173
poulpy123 wrote: post #149

I'm baffled by the idea of making science competition with so much prize money for teenagers. For me it's antithetic with the goal of scientific research and can only fail in the long term. As a side note, the real responsible here is not the tennagers, but the organizers that didn't manage to catch a fraud so obvious

most of these teenagers already come from upper middle class (professional parents) backgrounds, they don't need the money, they know that winning it is a guaranteed admission to MIT or Harvard. Getting admitted to top schools today is an order of magnitude tougher than it was even 10 years ago.

Maybe it's different in the US but everywhere else in the world 50K is a really huge amount of money for everyone but the 0.1% richest.But anyway if as you same it's also a ticket for the best schools, the rewards is still huge beside the money. I would even say it's even worse like that, because attending the best school give so many opportunities

Re: Scandal at America's top science fair

#220

Post by saberience »

watwut wrote: post #208
dagw wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are genuinely smart you will do well enough on qualify for top schools just by studying at school and on your own and relying on your own ability. And even the best and most expensive tutors cannot do that much to improve your scores if you just don't have the aptitude and discipline. The system now is far more geared towards sending only rich kids to college than any national testing and admissions system wou…

That is not how it works. People having tutors are genuinely smart, have discipline, do well and then get tutor to do even better.

How do kids end up "genuinely smart" or "have discipline"?

If your parents are rich and have are around and can provide excellent schools, nutrition, love and care, pay for extra-curricular activities etc, you are far more likely to end up being "smart" and "have discipline" than someone who grows up in a family where parents are absent, they have to go to an inner city school, they can't afford school trips, instruments, extra-curricular activities, since they have to have a part time job themselves to make ends meet.

My point is, that SO many of the qualities we think that somehow kids got "innately" are actually purely products of luck and circumstance. The ability to "work hard" isn't a gift some are born with and some are born without, it's learned and modeled from our lives, parents, teachers, experiences etc.

If you never have parents that buy you books and encourage you to read, it's doubtful you will end up being "smart"

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