8-Year-Old Scientists Publish Study in Journal

Hey Readers! As you know, one of the things I talk about a lot is not only that kids are SAFER than we think, but they’re also more COMPETENT than pop culture leads us to believe.  Here to remind us just how clever kids can be is this fahfkyafbk
story
, of 8-year-olds who studied whether bees can learn patterns and colors. Then they got their research published in a peer-reviewed journal. That’s the buzz for this morning. Enjoy! — L.

The bees that the kids studied were smaller. And flew.

,

16 Responses to 8-Year-Old Scientists Publish Study in Journal

  1. Marty December 24, 2010 at 1:50 am #

    very cool!

  2. Marie December 24, 2010 at 2:46 am #

    Peer reviewed? Would that be by other 8 year olds?

    Seriously, great job by the kids.

  3. Cheryl W December 24, 2010 at 3:24 am #

    But, but, that isn’t in the curriculum! How will this help the kids on their state tests in the spring??? And this involves living animals!

    Really, a great job by the kids, and the teacher for sticking to it and finding resources and getting their work published. If more teachers allowed for kid created work, my kids would be in school. These kids learned so much more because they were interested in what they were doing than they would be by picking up a text book and reading about it. Good for them!

  4. Verena B December 24, 2010 at 5:13 am #

    As long as the work is child driven, not parent ego driven. Kids are wonderfully smart and amazing in how they will push themselves far beyond what an adult would push them to do. However, neither should we push them to be like adults in the kind of responsibilities they take on.

  5. ebohlman December 24, 2010 at 5:18 am #

    Let’s not forget Emily Rosa, who at the age of 9 had a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (it demonstrated that there was no conceivable basis for a popular but silly practice involving nurses waving their hands over patients). This was in 1998.

  6. EricS December 24, 2010 at 5:46 am #

    I often wonder if some parents really do know this. They are just upset with themselves that their children are smarter and have more common sense then they do. So they make a point of bringing them down lower than their level.

  7. Randy December 24, 2010 at 6:08 am #

    Incredibly awesome. I especially liked the distinction that Lotto made (in a lecture at the school) between teaching science facts and teaching how to answer scientific questions.

    A lot of university students could learn from these kids’ example. You’d be surprised at how many college kids think that scientific research consists of finding something that mildly interests them and rattling off facts about it, calling the output a “research paper” (no wonder a lot of students think that science is boring).

  8. thinkbannedthoughts December 24, 2010 at 7:51 am #

    So awesome!! They must go to a school that actually allows science at the science fair 😉

  9. Maggie December 24, 2010 at 8:28 am #

    This is awesome on so many levels!

  10. B.S.H. December 24, 2010 at 8:36 am #

    Saw this article a few days ago and immediately thought of you! LOL!

  11. FRpediatrician December 24, 2010 at 10:05 am #

    There were also two teens on Science Friday last week who won a huge prize for developing mood-recognition software. It sounded really amazing.

  12. gramomster December 24, 2010 at 10:29 am #

    Read about this, LOVE it! Go kids!

    @ Randy
    I totally know what you mean! ugh

  13. Gail December 24, 2010 at 11:49 am #

    Wow. Just wow. I bookmarked the article to show my nine year old.

  14. Mike December 24, 2010 at 9:33 pm #

    ebohlman, I was about to mention Emily Rosa. The TT practitioners all assumed that a little kid couldn’t outsmart them, but she made them look like idiots.

  15. Michelle the Uber Haus Frau December 29, 2010 at 1:33 am #

    Years ago, wasn’t there a kid who tested whether Therapeutic Touch(gliding hands over body without actually touching) was real or not?

    I think I saw her on Penn and Tellers BS.

    Either way, thumbs up for the kids!

  16. ebohlman December 29, 2010 at 4:05 am #

    Michelle: You’re thinking of Emily Rosa. Her science fair project (which turned into an article in JAMA) demonstrated that “therapeutic touch” practitioners, far from being able to perceive human “energy fields”, couldn’t even tell whether or not someone else’s hand was near them without looking.

    Her mother, Linda Rosa, has done a great deal of work debunking truly dangerous “attachment/rebirthing therapies” that have actually killed several kids.