

Sixth grader's internet-famous science project may have been plagiarized - jmount
http://www.cflas.org/was-lionfish-research-hijacked-by-12-year-old-from-palm-beach-florida/

======
incision
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...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-
garamond-schools/)

2: [http://absci.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Jud-and-
Laym...](http://absci.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Jud-and-
Layman-2012-JEMBE.pdf)

~~~
jjoonathan
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.

~~~
incision
_> '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...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/outlaw-offending-
prophets-major-religions/94kL1tsN)

2: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/23/marine-
biologi...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/23/marine-biologist-
stolen-idea/13039871/)

~~~
jjoonathan
> 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.

------
danso
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...](http://www.npr.org/2014/07/20/333192387/sixth-graders-science-fair-
finding-shocks-ecologists)

> _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.

~~~
jmount
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.

------
imgabe
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?

~~~
TrainedMonkey
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?

~~~
tmarthal
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.

------
bitJericho
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.

~~~
fleitz
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.

------
jmount
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.

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

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

~~~
LanceH
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.

------
jeremysmyth
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.

~~~
pcrh
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](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10641-014-0242-y)

------
pcvarmint
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/](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.

(See also: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-
sushi/2014/07/24/p...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-
sushi/2014/07/24/proceeding-upriver-timeline-arrington-jud-dispute-estuarine-
lionfish/) )

------
debt
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.

~~~
mindslight
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.

------
gergles
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...](http://www.cflas.org/was-lionfish-research-hijacked-by-12-year-
old-from-palm-beach-florida/).

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed the url from [http://boingboing.net/2014/07/23/sixth-
graders-internet-famo...](http://boingboing.net/2014/07/23/sixth-graders-
internet-famou.html). We'll keep the latter's title, though, as less baity.

~~~
JamieeeT
Aaaand you killed their database.

~~~
jmount
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.

~~~
dang
> 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.

~~~
jmount
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).

