At this point, it might sound like graduate student bias; but I am also a graduate student, and I also think plenty of high school students can understand the m

At this point, it might sound like graduate student bias; but I am also a graduate student, and I also think plenty of high school students can understand the math necessary to do cutting-edge scientific research. I'm actually a math graduate student, and I've been thinking about how capable a high school student would be of doing math research. This started because two years ago, I was asked to facilitate a summer program for gifted high school students that opens up the possibility of math research for high school students. Interestingly, this too suffered from some of the problems highlighted in the article. Many of the students who got into this program were clearly parentally guided, and they floundered. But many were not, and did really well. This last summer, I had a pair of students particularly interested in cryptography [I'm a number theorist, and some of my bias comes through]. There is plenty of intersection between content a high schooler can understand and cryptography research, especially if it's interest-driven instead of industry-driven [I don't want to get into trials and travails of cryptographers here]. Would their ideas make money in the "real world of cryptography?" No. But they would make fantastic science fair projects, and they would especially benefit from several months of work instead of the 6 weeks that we had. tldr; I agree with you. A good number a of high schoolers are capable of performing research.