That's not only scientific fraud, it's real felony fraud.
Maybe community service equivalent to 50,000.00 at federal minimum wage would sort him out.
Maybe community service equivalent to 50,000.00 at federal minimum wage would sort him out.
For a 17 years old, even throwing together such work is already an worthwhile result. Teens is a golden age of compilation and remixing.
I am surprised that the organizers did not catch this, though I don't know enough to know how much time the organizers had.
> For a 17 years old, even throwing together such work is already an worthwhile result. Teens is a golden age of compilation and remixing.
For kids, in general, if one kid makes a claim ("I made this," or "This game cartridge is mine") that turns out to be false, there is generally some sort of comeuppance. That could be as simple as the kid losing respect within their peer group, or it could be as serious as parents being informed about the kid commiting a petty crime.
This is important, because it instills society's values (such as they are) in the child. For example, what if kid A steals a game cartridge from kid B, and then kid B retaliates by shooting and killing kid A? That response is generally frowned upon, in most parts of the world.
In my opinion, it would be fine if "the child" was presenting a poster showing the current state of research in microbial recycling of plastics. That's a cool thing for a high school senior or college freshman to do. But to take existing research (stealing), manipulate images (lying), and cast it as their own work (stealing and lying), on a national stage, that requires an appropriate comeuppance.
And that's what I am seeing happening right now.
You have unacceptable amount of leniency towards organizers, in "don't know how much time did they have". They should've had enough to scrutinize their short list. Perhaps it all looks like the winning submission.
I'd see some evidence.
Neither are particularly good behaviors, but as a "computer guy" I think your public-facing API (science fair admissions) should validate its inputs. There are people out there who send know malicious requests to endpoints, you know.
Instead of blaming an underage student I'd reevaluate all of their prior nominations. Chances of dragons being there.
> The child is nothing to be blamed for, it is a 100% problem of the organizers.
This is what I disagree with. A 17 year old is not an innocent child that mustn't be blamed. At this age (and already earlier too) there has to be real consequences for plagiarism, proportionate to the case.
Plagiarize coursework? Fail the course. Cheat in final exams? Fail the exams and retake the year. And so on.
If that's not his first participation then the previous ones should also be reevaluated.
But that doesn't have much point since he's growing out of them already. And I don't think it's fair to pursue him further (other than existing bad publicity) since people do stupid things all the time and the idea of limited liability exists for a reason.
If I,as a child, stole 50k USD, surely i would get thrown into the jail, or juvie.
>For a 17 years old, even throwing together such work is already an worthwhile result. Teens is a golden age of compilation and remixing.
There's difference between remixing and outright stealing with intent to deceive, for monetary gain.
Even more so when one's under university tutelage, and comes from well off family - where 50k USD matters way less.
Doing subpar work is not stealing. Come on, we've been through "intellectual property" already and now this.
aren't you affiliated with him somehow?
No! It wasn't. I'll bet no court will agree with you.
Next question.
Yeah, in the arts maybe, but not in the sciences.
You do not fail that hard by accident. It speaks of prolonged negligence and as I've said elsewhere, their whole portfolio needs to be rechecked.
As for research ethics, not everybody is a researcher and thus has the same ethic. For me the guys who get bogus computer-generated articles through reviews and into journals are genius, even though people with research background may see that as a violation. Tough life.