4 ms·

I've seen this happen in the US among my peers when I was in high school (mid 2000's). Parents with roles in medical / biomed research were by far the most prev

• starpilot 7y ago
  Yeah, similar with the (formerly Intel) Regeneron Science Talent Search. Every kid happens to have a parent who's an eminent researcher of some kind.
  • barry-cotter 7y ago
    That would be more or less the expected outcome if there was no cheating of any kind going on. If you grow up in a household where the dinner table conversation is about carpentry you’ll pick up a lot of background knowledge by osmosis and if you show the slightest actual interest most parents are very happy to share what they’re interested in with their child. Very few people become researchers without being comparatively obsessed with their field. Having family in a lab also means your path to working there is a lot easier because if you screw something up it’ll reflect badly on whoever brought you in. I’m sure there are tons of fraudulent papers “written” by teenagers but they’re certainly not all fraudulent.
• mountainofdeath 7y ago
  I can confirm this as well and my experience was circa 2009. The two cases where a) parent(s) or other close family were researchers or b) Non-researcher parent leveraged network to get some menial job (washing dishes) and in exchange they get listed somewhere in the research.