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8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study

Posted by samzenpus on from the write-of-the-bumblebee dept.

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."

6 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I have one thing to say to those kids: by RobiOne · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think you want 'adorabumble'

    -- Rob

    --
    -- Robi
  2. It's harsh but... by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. That is what education is meant to be ... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

    1. Re:That is what education is meant to be ... by pspahn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
  4. Idle? by Garth+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. According to the reviwers (Re:I cannot condone.. ) by prakslash · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.