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.
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.