4 ms·

Maybe I’m cynical, but whenever I read about a high school kid making a science breakthrough I assume this is what happened (based partially on personal experie

• jeremyscanvic 10mo ago
  Do you have any evidence to back this up? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity
  • parpfish 10mo ago
    Other than personal experience of having my PI tell me to hand over my own almost-done experiments to his friends kids?
  • laidoffamazon 10mo ago
    This is how it works 99% of the time This is the standard for getting into an elite school. Just getting good grades and generic "activities" hasn't cut it for twenty years or more. They live in a completely different world from the rest of us and they hate us for it.
  • Aurornis 10mo ago
    Admissions manipulation games are very common. Another tactic is for high school students to have their startup company “acquired” by their parents’ friends company, where the acquisition price is some token amount in exchange for hiring the kid for an internship. It can be really hard to judge these situations without getting the person in a 1:1 interview. Some times you meet someone with an extraordinary high school claim who can talk your ear off with impressive detail and deep understanding. Other times you start talking to someone and realize they don’t even understand their own topic beyond surface level understanding necessary for talking to a newspaper journalist. With a claim like this, I’d be looking for interviews or online discussions. Usually the young people who are actually accomplishing amazing things are super excited to talk to the world about it. If anyone can find this person engaging in online forums or posting about progress on the build up, that lend a lot of weight to the claim.
    • synergy20 10mo ago
      it went far beyond those 'research paper because I have a good dad' or 'I had a few startups and some even got acquired thanks to my dad's friend'. The math competitions hosted by MAA, the CS Olympiads called usaco,etc are all full of cheating these days for a better college application. People will do whatever it takes to cut in line now.
      • Aurornis 10mo ago
        How are the Olympiads full of cheating? I only participated in one but there wasn’t any room for cheating.
        • MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
          They're not. For some odd reason, the comments on this post are full of bitter people who cannot possibly fathom that brilliant young people not only exist, but also achieve amazing things on their own merits.
          • throw10920 10mo ago
            > They're not. Evidence for this claim? > For some odd reason, the comments on this post are full of bitter people who cannot possibly fathom that brilliant young people not only exist, but also achieve amazing things on their own merits. As opposed to you, who's up and down the thread making unsubstantiated claims and engaging in emotional manipulation to try to discredit (without evidence, I might add) the idea that there's any cheating or subversion going on whatsoever. The people you're responding to are making far better points than you are.
          • synergy20 10mo ago
            just google for 'maa math cheating', 'usaco cheating',etc. there are official statements somewhere that you can probably dig out too. people were selling the answers before the test for $5 on discord. my kids are taking these exams, and it saddens/discourages them so much as their classmates are bragging about those $5 answers and got super high scores. it's a public scandal, just that the media paid no attentions, so far.
  • SilverElfin 10mo ago
    This isn’t evidence but this was a well known issue even in the 90s and 00s. If you were a judge at high school science fair competitions (or a parent kid for that matter) you could easily tell which projects were actually done by adults. The complexity of the project, the equipment it would need, and the displays would give it away.
• throwup238 10mo ago
  Or, he goes to the polytechnic high school that’s right next to Caltech (half a block from the astronomy building no less) and getting research experience there is much easier than a regular high school. Looks like he went to Pasadena High School though. When I did a bit of aerospace research at Caltech in high school all I did was cold email professors so any kid around here with some initiative and smarts can get connected.
  • MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
    And indeed, that's exactly what happened [0]: the kid in the OP was in a rigorous research program for high schoolers, which connected their talents to PIs who could nurture and support them. GP shouldn't reactively tear down the success of exceptionally talented kids because of their own unfortunate n=1 life experience. [0] https://www.justinmath.com/math-academys-eurisko-sequence-5-years-later/ https://www.justinmath.com/math-academys-eurisko-sequence-5-...
    • _9za9 10mo ago
      $50,000 a year high school tuition can make anyone exceptionally talented
      • MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
        Pasadena High School, where Matteo went to school, is public.
        • halfmatthalfcat 10mo ago
          Not all high school educations are created equal - See Carmel High School (Carmel, IN), New Trier High School (Winnetka, IL), or any other High School in a densely high wealth area.
          • mothballed 10mo ago
            Pasadena school district spends $28K / student for their total $390M expenditures across ~14k students in 2023-2024 school year. I would bet dollars to doughnuts it's $30k+ per high school student since they are more expensive.
• evan_ 10mo ago
  My assumption is always, a bright high school student has an impressive science fair project, but science reporting is terrible and misinterprets it as something more than it is. (Also: "Kid outsmarts stuffy professionals" is an evergreen journalistic subject, and don't dismiss the political angle of sowing distrust in "establishment" scientists in favor of a younger person using AI) Not that young people can't do big things but it's probably got less rigor than a graduate-level project. Don't get me wrong, this is a really cool idea and it sounds like he did a great job. I don't want to be unjustly dismissive. These stories come up all the time and they usually don't amount to a whole lot- like most research.
  • parpfish 10mo ago
    yeah, the hard part about this issue is that the kids that do the project are generally super smart. this situation ends up hurting three groups: - postdocs that are in a precarious career position are being forced to give up a bunch of work "for free" that they cant put on their CV - the bright kid is often given a skewed perception about what working in science is like and they will be disillusioned when the handholding stops and they have super-high expectations placed on them - depending on the how the press frames it, the public either gets a story that's anti-intellectual "never trust the experts" OR some feel-good fluff about some savior-savant on the horizon. neither is useful science reporting but good for clicks.
• mothballed 10mo ago
  I would certainly believe this could be the case for this or the kind of science work that would be good for an application. Including this field. There are of course probably fields where there is ~no grant money, thus barely any research. Einstein noted we only know .001% of what there is to note of the universe, and even then he was probably embellishing in the favor of knowledge. I would also expect by the time you are a postdoc you are totally indoctrinated in your field in a way a high school student would not be. Standing on the shoulder of giants might not always be an advantage, if the giants have been whispering in your ear what to look at, whispering in your ear what they think is true, whispering in your ear what they think reality is, and all your fellows have been listening to whispers from similar giants.
• polybius89 10mo ago
  Yeah, it seems like so: "I would like to acknowledge and thank deeply my mentor Davy (Dr. J. Davy Kirkpatrick) for introducing me to astronomy at IPAC and providing guidance throughout this project, aiding in data analysis and the collection of known objects for the test set." https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ad7fe6 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ad7fe6
  • gammarator 10mo ago
    Sounds like Dr. Kirkpatrick should have been a coauthor.
• JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Sadly, I thought the same… Pasadena? Hmmm… Regardless of whether there is something rotten here, I think they should in fact focus on the science and not the person behind the science. And that gives the young person some cover too. The article says that The Astronomical Journal did just that: talked about the discovery without focusing on the age of the author. I think I prefer that.
• moralestapia 10mo ago
  Totally agree. Most careers in Science are nepo since day zero.
  • isthatafact 10mo ago
    I am no expert, and I am not sure what is meant by "nepo", but that seems like a wild mischaracterization or exaggeration. Is there evidence? It seems obvious that parents can increase or decrease the odds of someone starting a career in an "elite" field requiring advanced education like "Science", but I interpret your comment as suggesting that most scientists got their job by means of daddy donating to a university or some other silly fantasy.
    • moralestapia 10mo ago
      >Is there evidence? No evidence, I'm obviously lying ... Btw, nepo is broader than "my dad donated". Most (all?) worthy positions in academia depend more on who you're friends with than on talent just by itself.
      • isthatafact 10mo ago
        "worthy position" could only mean a relatively senior position, so the scientist would have already demonstrated success via publications, and having friends would of course be expected and required in a collaborative line of work. But hiring at that level would be done by a committee, not simply by a personal friend. If that is "nepo", then the term is meaningless. But that really has nothing to do with the original gripe about "day zero", which would generally mean getting into a masters or phd program, or perhaps an undergrad research project, where grades and standardized test scores get someone in the door -- social skills sufficient to hold a brief conversation about a science topic would be a nice bonus, but not really necessary.
        • moralestapia 10mo ago
          By worthy position I was thinking of something as simple as "not a temporary contract", I wasn't clear on that, my bad. And I confirm my previous statement, the immense majority of people who go on to take senior positions, particularly at big institutions, are made from day zero.
• thelastgallon 10mo ago
  This is spot on! Mostly, kids do less than nothing, their parents do the rest!
• SoftTalker 10mo ago
  Better than the postdoc I knew who was driving his PI's kids to football practice every day.
  • neilv 10mo ago
    This is one of the lesser bad-professor archetypes (the personal errand slaver) that surprisingly exists in real life. And much worse archetypes also exist and persist. Like many professors behaving badly, you'd think they'd get exposed and corrected. But grad students and postdocs (in a position to know what's going on) don't want to throw away their careers. They need the recommendations, they need to not be seen as damaged goods from a bad advisor, and they need to not have sketchy university administrators getting rid of the messenger. And if admin assistants notice, they probably need the job, especially if their kid is getting a tuition deal because the parent works at the university. To a bad professor, the environment is like a heartless business, only less accountable. When a friend was telling me about this brand new grad student, who'd be working with professor X, I said "Oh, no..." and that X was bad to students (which I knew from one of their students). Friend, who was from a prominent academic lineage, immediately responded crossly, that I shouldn't say such things, hurting people's reputations. Soon after, friend came back and apologized, that I had been right, and the student realized their terrible career move, getting that advisor. Friend later connected some prospective student to me, to warn them about a different bad (worse) professor in the whisper network. But universities have terrible institutional memories, with students always leaving. So a bad professor tends to persist. Though, occasionally, you'll hear of a bad professor from the whisper network leaving their job, without explanation. So presumably a wronged student or staff finally sued.
• leogao 10mo ago
  this kind of cynicism hurts young people who actually do good work on their own though.
  • bell-cot 10mo ago
    Grade inflation hurts the students who actually deserved 'A' grades. But if you are making consequential decisions (like admission or hiring) based on a metric or signal that's been gamed to death, then you have to be a realist.
    • leogao 10mo ago
      the converse is that good hiring managers who can spot actual undervalued talent have a huge advantage.
• mmooss 10mo ago
  Whenever I see any front page OP I assume HN comments will dump on it, even one about a high schooler winning a science prize with a genuine scientific discovery. I hope you don't treat your own and your loved ones' news and accomplishments the same way. Congratulations Matteo Paz. You not only won the science prize, you got the Hacker News front page treatment.
  • parpfish 10mo ago
    you're right. i'm clearly morally deficient because i've let my own (not at all idiosyncratic) personal experience color my opinions.
• alexpotato 10mo ago
  This is true of a lot of experiences in life though and isn't necessarily bad. e.g. let's take a corporate example: - New software is written to solve a problem - It kind of works. At least, well enough that it's less of a problem - An intern comes along and is told to make it better. They have nothing else to do so they give it their full attention for two months. - Software runs 5x faster. Intern gets hired for doing such great work Who should the credit for this? The person who originally solved the problem? or the intern who made it 5x faster? At some point, does it matter? The original writer probably got credit for solving the problem and the intern got hired. Basically, everyone got some kind of benefit. (This being HN, I am SURE there is going to be a debate about the above...)
  • parpfish 10mo ago
    this might be bait, but i'll bite. this example isn't a great example for the academic situation given the way "getting credit" works and how important it is in academia. getting credit for your work in academia isn't just about ego, it's the currency you use to get and keep your job. imagine if in software land you had to periodically assemble a list of your lifetime accomplishments and you were getting stack-ranked against every other dev in existence. if your list is found lacking, you have to leave software engineering for a different career. when work gets moved from a postdoc or gradstudent to serve as a vanity project for a connected high-schooler (i'm not saying that that's what happened in this case, but it is something that happens), you're hurting an early-career scientist that is actively contributing to the field in order to support a kid that "maybe someday" will start to contribute to the field.
• tejohnso 10mo ago
  Throw a $250,000 incentive into the mix and you're almost guaranteed to get less than honest work.
• NedF 10mo ago
  [dead]
• psyklic 10mo ago
  Mentorships are simply how most junior scientists get started. Even in grad school, most students initially take on projects their advisors have pre-qualified as interesting. To make high school-level competitions more fair, we should likely prioritize access to researchers for all smart, hard-working high schoolers rather than only those who are nearby a university or have wealthy parents.
• mathattack 10mo ago
  My assumption is most Science Fairs are based on Dad and Mom’s contribution, and things like this are filler for elite university applications. The one thing that suggests this might be legit is that Pasadena has an elite Math High School. https://www.mathacademy.us/ https://www.mathacademy.us/ If a college senior could pull it off, perhaps a properly educated high school junior could too.
• clickety_clack 10mo ago
  I live in a town with a few big pharmaceutical Co.s, and the local high school has several national science fair prizes (more than one would be very unlikely). All the kids that won prizes had parents working in R&D at those Co.s.
• firefax 10mo ago
  Or maybe it's the other way around? I was an undergrad, not in high school, but I basically designed and ran a project that led to a major publication that a useless postdoc who was foisted onto the lab leader for political reasons took credit for an "kindly" gave me last author on. Later, when I was in my own PhD, my adviser wouldn't let me continue MY OWN RESEARCH because it might "look like" I was stealing his work, so I had to invent a different thesis topic. The above was in CS, this is more STEM BTW -- it's perfectly possible to develop a new computational technique to "discover" 1.5m new interesting things in an existing data set -- it's impressive, but it's not on par with say, a botanist cataloging 1.5 million new flowers.
• rr808 10mo ago
  I'm going through this now, a few years ago I heard that "research" with college professors was key - I ignored it because I thought it was performative and unlikely that any decent professor would want to waste their time. The kids that had their EDs accepted to Ivys at my daughter's school all did research with "professors" that were parents or friends of parents. It explains a lot of what I see of our graduates from "top" universities we hire from.
• melagonster 10mo ago
  Sometimes they do all the operations by themselves. Finally, this is a race about who can find a scientist to design the best "research project" for their kids.