I've judged at the local school science fair in California, at the Intel ISEF a bunch of years ago, and I was also part of the organization that arranges the na

I've judged at the local school science fair in California, at the Intel ISEF a bunch of years ago, and I was also part of the organization that arranges the national science fair (Utstallningen Unga Forskare) in Sweden. Hence, I think I have some perspective on this topic. The American science fairs are a completely different thing from what we did in Sweden. First, the Swedish one is strictly for 17-19 year olds. But more importantly, the Swedish one is not a competition -- the whole idea is that you do this voluntarily, because you have some project you are excited about, and because you get feedback about your project from real scientists. What purpose does it serve to make it a competition? Isn't the idea to encourage the idea that science and engineering is fun and interesting? Making it a competition just serves to accentuate the issues mentioned in this article: giving an extreme advantage to kids who have access to professional equipment and personal mentoring. And the whole thing about doing "original science" is ludicrous, especially when it's applied to middle school kids. What matters is whether the outcome is known to the student, not to the world. Kids engage in authentic inquiry every day, and whether the topic is "original science" or not matters not one bit. If the choice is between the kid who investigated how different rubber bands shoot rocks of different sizes, but did it by his or herself vs. the one who was hand held through some fancy-sounding project at their parents lab, my choice will go to the former every time. And yes, maybe there are super prodigies out there who actually mastered a research field enough to not only be able to do cutting edge research but also to know enough to pick a topic that is as high school students. I'm not worried about those kids, they don't need encouragement.