Science fair paperwork pretty much parallels university level lab research paperwork. Anything biological requires an assessment of the level of lab required, it requires that the lab be correctly supervised, etc, etc. The old days where a kid could do about anything are long gone. Certainly some attention to safety is appropriate. But the article is correct in that no kid could deal with the mountain of paperwork required all by themselves. And the penalty for missing a piece of the paperwork is severe -- no entry for you.
In fact, it has given rise to a cottage industry of science fair mentors-for-hire. If you can find a highly enough motivated high school teacher to manage the paperwork, and can find a lab that has the correct rating for whatever you are doing, then great for you. Otherwise, there are a few places that can provide lab space and a mentor at an hourly fee, not to mention experience in getting the mountain of paperwork correct. It is good to have money to rub on the problem -- I'm sure a lot of kids get left behind because of that.
My daughter did an electronics project -- and the paperwork was still daunting, even though we could check "N/A" to all the biohazzard management sections, lab-has-eyewash, mentor qualified to handle animal tissues, etc. We still had to submit schematics and test plan material -- which is OK I guess because it is probably worthwhile to see if the project involves a direct connection to 220V AC mains before things get out of hand.
In the end though, one of the biggest problems with science fairs is getting enough qualified judges. The kids pour countless hours into the project, and hope for a 5-10 minute visit from 4 judges. If you are lucky, the judge might actually have a clue about your area of science or technology. Then the judging team tries to figure out some winners. One of the best ways anyone here on HN could help is to volunteer an afternoon per year to be a judge. Fairs are always short of qualified judges. Heck, they are short of judges that can fog a mirror. The best thing you can do for these kids is give them your time to encourage them and hopefully nudge the system towards a rational result.
That's absurd. Surely these are some kind of national science fairs or something, not ones held by local middle schools?
My school's science fair just required the teacher to sign off on it that it wasn't dangerous. My experiment involved running electricity through water (to turn rust back into metal), and no one cared.
Nope. For my kid's elementary school science fair, the classmates that were doing nothing more than collecting survey answers from volunteers had to file a separate human experimentation waiver form for each of their respondents.
After the informational meeting, I told my kid, point blank, "No people. No animals. Plants. How about a nice experiment involving plants?"
Ridiculous. One experiment I did in elementary school had something to do with rocks. Another was seeing how drinks (juice, pop, etc.) ruin teeth (I had a lot of spare baby teeth at that time), and another where I spoon-fed baby food to people to see how they reacted to the taste while blindfolded, nose plugged, etc.
All that without paperwork, and I'm not even very old -- I'm only in my early 20s.
This was for Santa Clara County which feeds ISEF, Cal State SF, and ISWEEEP. ISEF is the driver of most forms, and everyone follows along so that the path to ISEF is smooth.
> Science fair paperwork pretty much parallels university level lab research paperwork
Is this primarily the case in the US, or did I just manage to avoid it during my school days? I performed experiments that were probably no safer than those described here[0], and the only hurdle I had to pass was satisfying my teacher that it was safe enough (which boiled down to an informal a) you've thought about the risks, and b) aren't reckless; no actual paperwork)
[0] e.g. giving 16/17 year old unsupervised access to a 5kV power supply. The current used wasn't dangerous (pretty unpleasant to be shocked by though!), but it would destroy equipment easily (we went through 10+ multimetres, even though they were allegedly rated for that voltage) and the spark would set fire things pretty easily (paper, leaves, etc.)
It doesn't. The experiment could have been done by the dad and his daughter on their own without a single form. Its when the school and their lawyers get involved. The cynic in me wants to point out that the paperwork exercise might be the part that best prepares the young student for an actual career in science or engineering.
Safety regs aren't written for the expected case, they're written for the worst reasonable case. I can easily see how an experiment that involves bacteria cultures could cause problems. What if his daughter's immune system was fighting off strep throat at the time the samples were taken? How can we be sure that her samples don't present a threat to the judges and other people around her experiment? And that's just an example of a merely annoying infectious agent. She could easily have been carrying small quantities of something much more dangerous - a danger that is clearly amplified by growing them in a culture.
There are industry-standard protocols for performing this kind of work, and the school has a clear responsibility to ensure they are followed.
Oh, for christ's sake. Every day of school at whatever school that kid goes to, I guarantee that at least 2% of the population is sick. We aren't going to keep the world safe from strep throat by applying biohazard paperwork to science fairs.
You've missed the point: Growing bacterial colonies in a culture is inherently riskier than day-to-day contact with sick people.
I've worked in high-energy or high-risk systems nearly all of my career. There is such a thing as managed risk. The school didn't tell the family that they couldn't do the experiment. Instead, they owned up to the fact that the school didn't know how to manage this particular situation's risks correctly, and instead deferred to someone who did. That's a totally rational and reasonable response.
Growing bacterial colonies of botulism might be inherently riskier than day-to-day contact with sick people. Growing bacterial colonies of what's on your toothbrush just ain't.
Growing bacteria in agar is something that was completely de rigueur in elementary school when I was in elementary school in the 1980s. If this is a high-risk activity, I'm sure you'll have no problem finding some account of it every having done any damage in the conservatively hundreds of thousands of times it was done.
>Growing bacterial colonies of botulism might be inherently riskier than day-to-day contact with sick people. Growing bacterial colonies of what's on your toothbrush just ain't.
The difference between petri dishes with what was often a specified bacteria/mold and the bacteria from a person's mouth should be self-evident.
As brandmeyer pointed out, the girl may have had bacteria while showing no sign of having an illness (example given was strep throat). Having a small amount of the bacteria and then raising a colony of it could pose some risk of getting others sick.
The idea that research involving bacteria could go dreadfully wrong.
Imagine if she had somehow fostered a deadly pathogen on her toothbrush and through a mistake outside of her level of expertise managed to contaminate something/herself.
The mentorship of a professional was probably for safety reasons. Safely handling bacteria, avoiding contamination, etc. Which is partially why a risk assessment had to be filed (what are the chances of a deadly pathogen being raised in the samples?). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understood the situation.
I don't believe safety regulations should be waived for minors because "reasons" or "fostering an interest in science". Even if that makes life unfair.
> Imagine if she had somehow fostered a deadly pathogen on her toothbrush and through a mistake outside of her level of expertise managed to contaminate something/herself.
The idea was to try to kill bacteria in the toothbrush after she used it. By definition, she was already "infected". Does she need a waiver every time she is going to brush her teeth? Because I guarantee the toothbrush is not routinely subjected to that level of sterilization.
The only argument I can think of is that she could be creating bacteria more resistant to whatever was that she was trying to use to disinfect. But if that's a problem, then we should all focus on banning antibacterial soap first.
I remember in some biology class lab, we were not allowed to get our petri dish out the incubator by ourselves. The lab technician had to verify them before handling them to us. She had to dispose of one because it had a dangerous colony on it.
My science fair experiment was literally building a cannon. I lit hairspray on fire and shot potatoes at a wall and don't even remember signing a waiver.
