8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study

flintmecha writes "A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns. The paper itself is well worth reading. It's written entirely in the kids' voices, complete with sound effects (part of the Methods section is subtitled, ''the puzzle'duh duh duuuhhh') and figures drawn by hand in colored pencil."

Comments

Re:I have one thing to say to those kids:

[RobiOne]

I think you want 'adorabumble'

-- Rob

It's harsh but...

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

...that's how it is in these publish or perish primary schools.

That is what education is meant to be ...

[shutdown -p now]

... but sadly isn't, all too often. That said, it's good to know that there are teachers out there who care to run such projects, as well as lucky bright kids to take part in them.

Re:That is what education is meant to be ...

[pspahn]

Yeah, unfortunately we have way too much interest in teaching children things like "content standards". As a result, we have way too many "hand out, sit down" teachers who might teach a kid how to pass the state mandated test, but they are incapable of learning things through critical reasoning. This is not engaging to most students. They want interaction and feedback and praise and it takes a VERY special kind of person to be willing to do that.

Out of all the teachers I've had and have worked with, very very few have the necessary blend of proper teaching style and the ability to relate to the younger generation. Too often they are too young to know how to teach effectively, or are too old to be able to see things from the kids' perspectives.

Side note: I recall hearing on talk radio several years ago that education majors have some of the lowest SAT scores. I'm not sure the exact figure, but this does not surprise me, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. There really need to be more teachers out there, as I would prefer my child have co-teachers that each bring a certain quality to the classroom versus one teacher who is typically incapable of adapting to the class dynamic.

Re:That is what education is meant to be ...

[Pharmboy]

Just keep in mind that it isn't completely the teacher's fault, at least in the US. In the states, forcing teachers to teach to a test, or risk losing funding for their school (and bonuses for themselves) is the problem. This is one reason I would prefer much more control at the local level, and only guidance at the federal level. Concerned parents can only get involved when the decision making is local, and are powerless when it comes to forced federal mandates. Unconcerned parents, well, it doesn't really matter, so lets worry about the parents who actually are trying to help their kids. The children of the unconcerned parents will get the same educational outcome regardless of the system.

Re:That is what education is meant to be ...

[Teancum]

My largest complaint about standardized tests is that the teachers/instructors teach for the test itself, and in fact spend far too much time talking about testing strategies and how to physically take the test itself or concentrating on trying to push the students to get a high score on the test rather than trying to teach the material actually covered by the test.

If you want students to regurgitate rote answers that come from a multiple-guess testing service, I suppose that helps. While that may assay the raw information that a student may possess, it does little to show that the student can apply that knowledge in any reasonable form.

Then again I'm a big fan of essay tests or better yet, as appropriate, some sort of demonstration of the knowledge such a a "final project" or something of substance which can be used to show that the student has been able to assemble the knowledge from the class in a reasonable manner. A "term paper" is another good example of this. It is much harder on the instructor to go this route as it requires evaluating the students more directly on their knowledge and more importantly their comprehension of the topic.

This particular paper that was published in Biology Letters is precisely the kind of "final project" that to me ought to be routine for even elementary schools, even if it doesn't necessarily get published in a formal journal of this nature. Showing kids that they are certainly capable of doing real science and pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge is something that ought to be a part of science education in particular. I applaud this particular teacher, and I hope that this example can be used to encourage other bright students to at the very least build a science fair exhibit of the quality which goes beyond the volcano models that I see far too often.

Re:That is what education is meant to be ...

[AlecC]

On the other hand, international comparisons show that the most successful school systems are the ones where teachers are recruited from the high flyers. Finland was given as an example. From the article (in The Economist) it seemed that a really good teacher was far more important than class size, one of the things that people fight for. The conclusion seemed to be to pay, and respect, teachers more so that high flyers see teaching as a worthwhile career, and let class sizes grow if they have to.

Idle?

[Garth Smith]

This story has been tagged "idle" by Slashdot. That's an insult! What's wrong with our culture that even the geeks and nerds among us don't see education as important? These 8-10 year olds just had a better science lesson than most anything kids get today.

The best science class I ever had was in high school. My lab partner and I were given 2 test tubes with 2 types of bacteria. This was out of a possible 10 types. We were given 2 weeks to identify them and write a report on our methods. This was when I was 16! Not only did I learn a lot but that was just such a fucking cool assignment that I would consider it a much MUCH better experience than YEARS of mediocre science classes combined! Science was actually exciting, and I pray to Christ and the Buddha that these teachers get some respect soon before stupid takes over.

Re:Idle?

[wizardforce]

Agreed. By the looks of the paper they wrote, it seems that many of the better science fair projects ought to try submitting their results too.

10 years old: determine differences in plant growth between indoor lighting and natural sun light (never thought to do what these kids did though... oh well)

15: genetic transformation of bacteria w/ ampicillin resistance gene (successful)

19: Selenium hyperaccumulation research paper submitted and accepted by Science

I know I've done that experiment too but I forget exactly when it was. From what I've seen, it seems that a lot of the difference between a good education and a rather mediocre one is in what you decide to take if you have a choice. If you take genetics in high school, you'll probably get to do a lot of neat stuff compared to just trying to slide through school.

Of course a lot of the problem lies with the teachers who have often had their curiosity ruined in their school years like a lot of other people have. What needs to happen is geeks like us need to become teachers or at least mentors and inspire the next generation to do the neat stuff we did.

Re:Idle?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've got that backwards. Teachers and Scientists => Nerds/Geeks who often were victims of bullying do most of the intellectual work while the more "social", manipulative group became politicians and bankers. School is just a much more extreme form of real life.

Re:Idle?

[Daniel_Staal]

These kids did advance our collective knowledge. They did an experiment that no one else had done, because they were interested in the results. From those results they learned something.

I see no reason a good science fair project couldn't do the same. If a elementary school kids in Egypt or a high school kid in Tanzania (see: 'The Mpemba effect') can do it, why not others?

Finally...

[fahrbot-bot]

It's written entirely in the kids' voices, complete with sound effects (...) and figures drawn by hand in colored pencil.

... a scientific write-up Republicans will be able to understand! :-)

Great job

[cvtan]

Glad the journal didn't bounce the work because the figures were not done in Excel or Powerpoint. I'm ashamed I never used crayon for any of mine. Crayons are at least open source and DRM free.

Emily Rosa

[Genrou]

Very nice to find that there are kids who are being taught about science. Before them, Emily Rosa was the youngest to publish a peer-reviewed paper. Her paper was an amazing experiment to refute terapeutic touch in a very well conducted study. Kudos to them

Re:Emily Rosa

[Garth Smith]

Since Slashdot doesn't RTFA. Teacher wrote the abstract. The educators transcribed the rest from what the kids said verbally. Diagrams were made by the kids. The teacher collected everything and you could say worked as Editor-in-Chief, Typesetter, etc. Both the kids and the educators are listed as authors.

Re:Emily Rosa

[Maria D]

Piaget published his first paper, also on biology, at ten. He could not get into the local scientific library without being a scholar. He asked what it takes, and the librarian said "a publication" - so he did just that.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/piaget_jean.html

I wonder if his early problems led him to study what children are capable of later. Ironically, his developmental theories were often misinterpreted to mean that children should be restricted from some studies, especially in mathematics. There are some videos of Piaget yelling at people for that, at conferences. He has fun studies on toddlers doing proportional reasoning and what not.

Re:Good thing they didn't include birds also

[Feminist-Mom]

I hate to be the cynic, but this looks really contrived. And phrases like the one in the abstract "we learned that science can be cool" (paraphrased) are so old hat and trite. I hear my kid come back from school programmed to say the same thing. It seems that this work could give the children involved what actual scientific work is like. I am concerned that the real reason for this work to further the career of their attention getting teacher. [Just conjecture.]

Difficulties getting it published?

[RossR]

Sounds like it was hard to published it on its merits alone. The last line of the paper is a bit cryptic.

"The project was funded privately by Lottolab Studio, as the referees argued that young people cannot do real science."

What does the funding source have to do with the referees' prejudices? Was some extra funding needed to resolve their concerns?

Personally, I am going to look for an excuse to cite their paper.

Re: Difficulties getting it published?

[Caerdwyn]

Personally, I am going to look for an excuse to cite their paper.

Here's one for you (and for commercial greenhouse-based farmers with multiple crops per greenhouse). Can the effectiveness of bee-based pollination inside greenhouses be increased by using similarly-patterned layouts in each greenhouse, then transporting "trained" hives from greenhouse to greenhouse? Can pollination-runs be accomplished faster with pattern-trained bees, thus allowing one hive to effectively pollinate more greenhouses per week? If bees "trained" to specific locations in a pattern head to that pattern preferentially, specific crops can be targeted.

"Cycle the outer-circle bees through the greenhouses, the roma tomatoes are ready for pollination and we don't want the bees wasting time on the pepper plants in the inner zone."

Research into application into cost savings.

Pure Research is Not Dead

[Wingit]

Brilliant work and pure science for the sake of science. It is not earth shattering news, but is exactly what science is meant to bring to the human experience. The life of the children involved is forever changed. Now some of them will go on to discover more things that are right under our nose and write about it intelligently. Few will care but, in the end, we all benefit.

Re:Pure Research is Not Dead

[shoehornjob]

Few will care but, in the end, we all benefit.

Screw the people that don't care about engaging kids in science. America is sadly deficient in this area. We're overly preocupied with our false reality (tv) to appreciate the need for kids to learn science and math. I love the little bit at the end:

The project was funded privately by Lottolab Studio, as the referees argued that young people cannot do real science.

What they did was commendable even if the teacher had to transcribe their work.

Re:Good thing they didn't include birds also

[Caerdwyn]

Next experiment:

Investigations into the Correlation Between Cynicism and Technically-Oriented Social Network Participation

I cannot condone this

[Missing.Matter]

I think it's great that these students are excited about science and were able to participate in a learning experience like this, but after reading the paper it's clear to me this was published only because the children are 8; the true value of this paper is for educators in the sciences looking to motivate children through unique projects.

I hate to be a Negative Nancey, but if the current paper (with more formal language of course) were submitted for by a college graduate it would be rejected outright. The paper begins by asserting that the ability to problem solve is a sign of extreme intelligence, and further conflates pattern recognition and intelligence. The methods seem sound (control, rigorous data taking) but there is no statistical analysis of the data to show correlations, just a statement of "more did this therefore..." Further they make the claim that no one has ever done this particular experiment, yet a quick search yield over 50,000 articles pertaining to pattern recognition in bees. Yet nothing like this was ever conducted? Seriously? Given this prior research, it is their obligation to show how their research is unique and different, and further why it is important. I realize the paper states that the students couldn't do this since the language in the literature is far above their level, but it's just another reason showing this paper was published because of their age, not because of the work.

Again, good on the students for having fun and enjoying science, but I'm a firm believer that results should stand on their own irrespective of the experimenter's ages.

Re:I cannot condone this

[gringer]

Scientists don't need to be statisticians to be able to do good research. They also don't need to be good writers, or good reviewers. These things help, but shouldn't be necessary in order to get results out to the world.

I, for one, am glad that this paper was published. It gives the scientific community as a whole the opportunity to critique this, rather than just the reviewing panel. It looks like the review process worked well in this case — the investigation that was carried out seems reasonable, and I very much doubt that the published version is the first version that the journal editors saw, even though they have kept in some of the cutesy language.

Blackawton ?

[damn_registrars]

I notice that the town, the school, and the first author are all named Blackawton. When I looked that up on wikipedia all I can find is the town itself, no information on where the name derives from. I was wondering how they decided who would get first-author rights on the paper (very important in the biological sciences)?

And one little thing I noticed on the paper itself when I read the full text (free in html or pdf through the web site) - they didn't cite any sources. Few publications would allow that these days, I would have expected that their corresponding (last) author would have added in some sources to establish the background at the least.

According to the reviwers (Re:I cannot condone.. )

[prakslash]

I was skeptical as well but according to the reviewers:

"What is novel in the experiment presented here is that bees learned colour and pattern cues in a spatially complex scene composed of two-coloured local and global patterns. Coloured patterns at small and large spatial scales have been little studied, and hence our knowledge of how colourful patterns and scenes are perceived by insects is still scarce."

I am assuming that the above statements are true and the paper is novel. There are citations in the reviewers' comments indicating that the reviewers referred previous work in this area but still found the kids' research to be novel. Finally, even though the reviewers appreciate dthe fact that the paper was written by children and lacked advanced analysis, they didn't seem too biased. All this has made me less skeptical now.

Re:and

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think you mean 'and' as in the primary school published and the journal's scientific reputation perished.

I guarantee you that the reputation of Biology Letters is not in any danger. It is and will remain a top-tier journal, and its readership will pay no attention to the opinions of trolls in making this judgement.

This passed peer review?

[abigsmurf]

Had a read of the paper and there seem to be two big flaws that are not addressed and would've prevented a paper passing 'regular' peer review.

1: They never address the possibility the bees are just smelling the sugared water. They clean the 'stems' to ensure the bees don't attract other bees through smells (although that itself is also questionable, presumably the smell a bee releases would be released all over) but don't do anything about the sugar/salt water itself.

2: There's no evidence the bees can see colours (assuming point 1 is moot). Namely because of the choice of patterns. They use bright colours alongside dark ones. The bees could just be seeing light and dark. There's only one low contrast pattern (the green and blue one) which would've been great for testing this but they chose to put it alongside one with mixed bright and dark colours. Also, without an even spread of light and dark areas, the bees may not even be recognising patterns, they may just be going "this area is darker than the other one, the other one has the sugar water". Spoilsport I know but they shouldn't pretend this is anything other than a cute bit of PR.