Sixth grader's internet-famous science project may have been plagiarized | Hacker News Reader

Sixth grader's internet-famous science project may have been plagiarized

cflas.org

71 pointsjmount39 comments

Am I missing something?

It seems to me the best thing this guy and the people who want to 'help' him could have done is just leave the whole thing alone.

On its own this is just another in an endless string of 'One weird fact this amazing kid discovered!' stories that will be forgotten next week if not tomorrow - like the ink saving science fair kid from March [1].

People who matter will find this guy and his discovery through the paper [2] he published. People reading the viral sources of the story about this girl and 'her discovery' will forget it all in the time it takes to click on through to '10 Celebrities Who Look Like Their Pets!'.

Also, the real problem here seems to be plain old bad/breathless media coverage more than anything else.

1: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-ty...

2: http://absci.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Jud-and-Laym...

The original researcher spoke out and complained, so I it is safe to assume they to some degree consider discussing this helpful.

>Am I missing something?

Yes, integrity.

The easy thing probably would have been to leave this whole thing alone. But the easy thing to do isn't automatically the right thing to do.

>'Yes, integrity.'

I'm confused, do you mean to be so needlessly insulting?

You misunderstand, I'm not saying you personally lack integrity. I'm saying integrity is what is missing from your consideration of this issue.

Integrity and honesty are important values that are worth standing for even if it's not the most pragmatic course of action.

Yes, you are missing something: the narrative that the kid made a scientific discovery is spreading so far and wide that it could very plausibly become a PR/SEO problem for the grad student who is on the verge of launching his scientific career (the single time that this sort of thing matters most to a scientist).

> there is now a petition online demanding that Arrington’s name be added as an author to Jud’s most recent scientific publication

This goes far beyond "one wierd fact" headlines. Authorship requests and articles published in scientific venues (CFLAS) bring this issue into the scope of things that academics care about.

People who 1: matter and 2: have time will not be fooled. #2 is the sticking point. There are many gatekeepers to prestige in the academic world (journals, conference hosts, departments inviting each other around for guest lectures, people running outreach programs, etc). Many of them don't have the time or the inclination to get to the bottom of PR scandals. The ones that do have the time (e.g. hiring committees) pay attention to metrics representing the opinions of those who don't have time, so ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

He is doing the very minimum required to avoid being hurt by someone else's lie. The way I see it, he has handled the issue with admirable delicacy.

>'This goes far beyond "one wierd fact" headlines. Authorship requests and articles published in scientific venues (CFLAS) bring this issue into the scope of things that academics care about.'

Not really.

Worrying about one of thousands if not millions of online petitions [1] that anyone can create is on par with fretting over whatever foolishness someone publishes on their blog.

There are a lot of people quoting and re-quoting that petition claim with anger and horror but there's not a single link to it and Google uncovers nothing.

I would not surprise me if such a petition exists, but whether it matters at all is highly questionable.

>'Many of them don't have the time or the inclination to get to the bottom of PR scandals.'

What scandal? The story of the girl will/would be forgotten tomorrow. It only becomes anything resembling scandal Streisand style as a result of the response [2].

1: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/outlaw-offending-p...

2: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/23/marine-biologi...

> Not really.

Yes, really. Competition in academia is fierce. Professorship positions typically have dozens to hundreds of applicants each -- and all of those applicants have made significant contributions to a field of research (PhD) and then some (postdoc). Non-academic qualifications such as outreach, teaching evaluations, and so on are an important dimension along which aspiring academics can differentiate themselves.

> What scandal?

If the girl helped put together the paper and wasn't listed as an author, that would be a scandal. If you search Jud's name on google and a petition to add someone to one of his papers pops up, even the most rational person would assign a nonzero probability to the possibility that he did, in fact, wrong her. It is a SEO/PR problem.

> "Am I missing something?"

Possibly that some people are accusing the grad student, who actually did the original research, as plagiarizing the little girl.

Neither she nor her father have, to my knowledge, corrected those critics.

Hopefully this was all a huge misunderstanding...but we really need to hear from the girl's father, who likely would've been the primary enabler of this given his relationship to the plagiarized researcher. I mean, I just have to give him the benefit of the doubt for now...that perhaps he helped his daughter with her science project and then was called away to an emergency, or a stretch of focused work, during which point he forgot about the science fair and the story took a life of its own. Because...even if he were being malicious...how dumb would he have to be to think he could gain from this, or get away with it?

Edit: Worth mentioning, but in the NPR piece from yesterday, there's this:

http://www.npr.org/2014/07/20/333192387/sixth-graders-scienc...

> Her research did not stop there. Craig Layman, an ecology professor at North Carolina State University, confirmed Lauren's results. "He credited a sixth-grader for coming up with his idea," Lauren says ecstatically. Layman's findings were published this year in the science journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. Lauren is mentioned in the acknowledgments.

OK...this science journal has a little explaining to do, too.

The thing is: there is no Solomon/neutral solution to this. Either the original researcher was harmed or not. I feel a need to be fair to the original researcher as well. This entails calling out people who harmed them, or allowed harm they could have stopped to continue. Keeping silent and waiting plays to one side.

I think this is on the media that reported it for not doing their research. It seems harsh to claim that it's plagiarized. I didn't realize sixth grade science projects were supposed to be original research. Are all those papier-mache and baking soda/vinegar volcanoes novel insights into how volcanoes work?

None of the papier mache volcanoes claim to have discovered something novel. It is clear to all involved that those are an imitation intended to give children something to do, rather than to force them to actually learn and understand the scientific process.

the scientific method includes independent confirmation of results, so duplicating others' work is actually learning and understanding the scientific process. publication on the other hand...

There is a strange coincidence that the girl is not some random kid. She is daughter of the friend of professor who supervised original researcher. It is possible she overheard her father and supervisor talking about the problem and figured things out herself, but what are the chances of that?

For the last eight or so years, I have been a judge at the California State Science fair. At this level, the projects must have won the county or city level (not quite the same for all of them, but it is usually their second or third fair presenting their projects).

There is a a Senior division (for anyone in high school) and a Junior division for everyone younger.

Let me tell you, even though it is usually the kids second or third career fairs, all of the Junior level kids that I have judge have only a very basic idea of the science that they are doing. They are usually very unprepared to talk about their methods or accurately understand the scientific method and what they are measuring. Granted, it is usually the first time talking to a "scientist" with industry or academic experience (rather than elementary school teachers), but usually the conclusions that they draw are rather unlikely. The experiments are never setup properly, they do not measure anything really, they get their ideas off of the internet or out of a "science experiments for science fairs" book (and usually tweak it to win their way to the state level).

This may be different with a professor for a father, but I am skeptical that any child ,even at the high school level, can come up with independent ideas for applicable science experiments.

Or more likely, her father had a political gripe with Jud and used her as a pawn to get back at Jud.

Her father is friends with Jud's former supervisor; maybe Jud and his former supervisor had a falling out, and this is a friend's way to help get back at Jud.

This is on the Father AND the Media. The father being a professor understands (or should understand) academic integrity. He knew the work was done by another researcher and yet he let all this acclaim rain down on his daughter for her "discovery".

It's a children's science project! How is this a story?

But..., but..., it's FOR THE CHILDREN!

I find children love to copy and build on other people's works. That's how many of us, maybe even all of us learn as children. It's unfortunate some parents don't teach children the difference between studying and replicating other people's work and plagiarism. A simple credit to the original author would have been ample, but then it probably would have meant no e-celebrity for the little girl.

I doubt she hired a PR agency to promote her science fair project, I'm imagining that her Mom/Dad knew about the lionfish thing told her about it, she did a typical science fair job of things, and the media grabbed ahold of it after someone told them about it.

Science + Media = Science Fiction

Like most things science fiction, the science is there purely as a backdrop for what is a human interest story.

This issue isn't expecting new research from science fairs (which would be a bit over the top), but claiming something your parent published in 2011 is your work and novel in 2014. But yeah, at least it wasn't a papier-mâché volcano or a potato clock.

What? A parent's work appearing in a child's science project?!

Haha such a good call. Personally, I'm looking forward to building a farnsworth fusor with my daughter when it comes science fair time.

Since uptight school district frowns upon explosive, I think we're going with lasers.

I've also considered helping my son learn the math to do something most of the judges wouldn't be able to follow.

I haven't been able to find any information that Zack Jud (the "original scientist") actually performed the same experiment that Lauren Arrington did. If such information exists, I'd be very happy to change my mind. Until then, here's what it looks like:

- Jud did some good science and discovered some fish where they shouldn't be (in fresher water than had been previously thought possible)

- He published his work, and one of the co-authors is associated with Arrington, the kid scientist at the centre of this. (a co-author is a friend of Lauren's dad)

- Lauren (some years later) did a series of experiments where she kept the fish in tanks and gradually exposed them to fresher and fresher water, and the fish did not die.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, Jud discovered fish living in fresher water than previously thought possible, but did not perform controlled experiments in tanks. While his results are similar to those that Lauren is becoming famous for, they are not the same.

I agree that his work was probably crucial to the formation of Lauren's experiments (and that the core of the result--that the fish can live in fresher water than thought possible before Jud's work--is not original), but can't help think that there's an inappropriate conflation going on here, if not more than one.

It's mostly that it was someone 12 years old. If a 30 year old had discovered something about fish no one would care.

Chalk it up to a slow news day, this story is upworthy gold, nothing more, nothing less.

Not quite, Jud did a ecological survey in 2011 and followed-up with experimental tests of the ability of Lionfish to tolerate a range of salinity. This was published in February 2014: "Broad salinity tolerance in the invasive lionfish Pterois spp. may facilitate estuarine colonization"[1].

Arrington Snr is not an author on this later manuscript, but was presumably aware of the work.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10641-014-0242-y

Apparently her father, Albrey Arrington, was a signatory to a creationist declaration, which at least raises questions about his scientific integrity:

http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/

I think her father, or his friend Craig Layman, who was Jud's former adviser, had a falling-out with Jud, and so her father is trying to retaliate against Jud passive-aggressively, by taking credit away from him by using his daughter as a pawn. It is very disturbing, if true.

This is just my gut instinct, from all that I've read, skipping over the technicalities of the papers and who cited whom. There's something bigger going on.

Couldn't this have been easily prevented if they had done proper journalism in the first place?

Instead all these "news" outlets(including BoingBoing) mindlessly linked to an untrue story and have potentially ruined a man's career. All for some ad dollars.

RIP journalism.

EDIT: I love that cflas.org lists more than 10 sources that immediately discredits the claims by this young girl. Obviously, not a single person at any of these "news organizations"(BoingBoing, CBS, etc.) could have been bothered to do any research to fact check this story. Absolutely incredible.

"All for the ad dollars" I think mischaracterizes the motives. The people voting up the story on Reddit or sharing it on Facebook aren't doing so for money. It's the same impulse with writing/publishing a feel-good story.

That pretty much sums it up. This article included:

> A month following the announced lionfish ban in Florida [1], a 12-year-old south Florida girl accredited [2] for breakthrough in lionfish research; mistaken accreditation, or plagiarism? [3]

Notice how the sentence sets up extremely strong [1], dwarfing its extremely flat passive voice [2]. Then it uses to the standard "reasonable explanation or sensationalism?" linkbait construction [3].

Perhaps this girl should have learned about giving proper attribution for her science fair project, or perhaps an elementary schooler has no fucking ability to judge what is original research versus playing/copying (ie how one learns). Please tell me who was given attribution for the inevitable crop of vinegar volcanoes exhibited concurrently.

And I can understand Jud's reaction thinking "that could be my research in the spotlight", but honestly the story isn't about the science, it's a hollow attention-grabbing trope of "You won't believe a 12 year old girl did THIS".

Everyone involved in this situation has had their lives worsened by sensationalist attention parasites. IMHO, it's our duty install Adblock (etc) so they will hopefully dry up.

This is pretty blogspammy, the better source that is linked to in the article is http://www.cflas.org/was-lionfish-research-hijacked-by-12-ye....

Thanks. We changed the url from http://boingboing.net/2014/07/23/sixth-graders-internet-famo.... We'll keep the latter's title, though, as less baity.

Aaaand you killed their database.

Anticipating the web-site not being able to take the load is why I linked to Boing Boing (also the slightly less provocative title). The thing I mind about titles and links being changed (which probably is in fact a good idea) is the common additional implication the titles and links intentionally broke guidelines, were malicious, or ill-concieved. But I do get the complaint that Boing Boing is sort of making hey of their own failure in reporting when they promoted this story without any investigation on their own part.

> is the common additional implication the titles and links intentionally broke guidelines, were malicious, or ill-concieved

I'm not sure what you mean, but if you think the comments I've been posting when changing urls or titles are unfair, I'd appreciate suggestions for rewording them. The more specific the better.

Not your comments, just the occasional comments snarks of others (sorry, I don't actually have a specific example at hand). Your comment is actually helpful (mentions a change has been made, explains the decision, and even mentions the original URL).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com