Usually what happens in these stories is that a kid makes something that is a pale imitation of current standards, and the parents use their industry connections to get a PR blast about their awesome kid, that gets the kid a leg up in college or getting a job, and the 'invention' is forgotten.
I think what more often happens is one of the parents are almost entirely responsible for the project, and the kid understands it well but had little to do with its creation/invention/discovery.
If not, then it's quite a coincidence that most of the kids in these stories just happen to have a parent who works in the same field their project was exploring.
Then the parents use their connections to generate news stories about it. It works because these are harmless fluff pieces, and anyone casting doubt on the work of a supposed child is viewed as a cynical curmudgeon, so they mostly go uncontested.
That gets them into a better college, then the project is forgotten and the kid does average from there on out.
I remember a particularly egregious example of this from a few years ago, something about a 9-year-old raising millions of dollars and digging thousands of water wells in Sub-Saharan Africa. Clearly this is BS, but what kind of monster would point out the absurdity of that?
These stories are pretty much always PR tactics by wealthy and/or connected parents to boost the profile of their kid.
I don't understand, why can't the parents be helping and mentoring their kids, without necessarily doing the work for them?
I'm a son of two voice actors, and have done some voice acting myself as a 12-year-old. No, it wasn't a coincidence, but I also guarantee you that my parents didn't act on my behalf! I just, you know, learned from them.
They changed your world, because they got you into programming, and how cool and complicated and frustrating and wonderful that can be an activity.
So don't underestimate that aspect.
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-17-year-old-that-yahoo-pa...
Lead based paint has 5000 ppm (parts per million) of lead [1]
Water is considered unsafe at levels over over 15 ppb (parts per (billion) [2]
So her test kit is orders of magnitude more sensitive than a lead paint test kit, it's not even in the same ballpark. (if you're standing at home plate and her test kit is at first base, then the lead paint test kit would be over 5000 miles away)
[1] https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/20264_LEADSPEAK.PDF
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm
* I couldn't find any specs on the sensitivity of her product, so I used the EPA's cutoff for unsafe lead levels
> 15 ppb
> if you're standing at home plate and her test kit is at first base, then the lead paint test kit would be over 5000 miles away
Is there some way you could put this in terms of libraries of congress? Maybe if we laid them end to end?
The LoC holds around 24M cataloged books [1] in its collections.
So the difference between a lead paint detection kit and this project is like the difference between the LoC and a single bookshelf of 72 books.
Or, if you prefer bigger numbers, the LoC has around 540 miles of shelf space [2], so if you laid out all the shelves end to end, it's like the difference between the shelves of the LoC versus shelves that span 180 million miles (greater than the distance between Mars and the Sun [3])
[1] https://www.loc.gov/about/general-information/
[2] https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc79.htm
[3] Note: if you try to verify this, use caution, you'll need some sort of heat shielding on the shelves nearest the sun.
Sure, but what's wrong with that? It's a little unrealistic to expect an 11 year old girl to productize an invention and bring it to market -- she'd have to team up with a schoolmate who is a budding patent attorney to have any hope of doing so without outside funding.
The nice thing about stories like this is that it helps gives inspiration to other young budding scientists.
Everything!
* You teach the child dishonesty (taking credit for someone elses work can terminate your academic career). * In this particular case, the child becomes the face of a marketing campaign (that's her actual contribution: selling a product). * Stories like this one put pressure on other children because their parents buy it hook line and sinker and want the same for their children.
Have you seen her presentation? Did she not credit her sources?
That's almost what happened with Theranos, but we forgot to forget the "invention".
It's not? Great. Prove it. (This logic may not always hold, but surely it does for test-and-measurement devices)
The thing is, I wasn't making any assertions (or counter-assertions) about the original storyline. The person I was responding to did, in the form of, basically, "But there was already a similar-sounding product on the market, wasn't there? Therefore this kid couldn't possibly have come up with anything all that novel or interesting."
Which to my ears sounds like an unsupported inference.