Young Scientists of the Year

Potential-Monke

Just for the craic, here's the headings of all the previous winners in the 2010's:

2018
Simon Meehan
Coláiste Choilm, Cork
‘Investigation of the antimicrobial effects of both aerial and root parts of selected plants against Staphylococcus aureus.’

2017
Shane Curran
Terenure College, Dublin
‘qCrypt: The quantum-secure, encrypted, data storage solution with multijurisdictional quorum sharding technology’

2016
Maria Louise Fufezan and Diana Bura
Loreto Secondary School – Balbriggan, Co. Dublin
‘An Investigation into the Effects of Enzymes used in Animal Feed Additives on the Lifespan of Caenorhabditis Elegans’

2015
Ian O’Sullivan and Eimear Murphy
Colaiste Treasa, Kanturk, Co. Cork
‘Alcohol consumption: Does the apple fall far from the tree?’

2014
Paul Clarke
St Pauls College, Dublin
‘Contributions to cyclic graph theory’

2013
Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow
Kinsale Community School, Co. Cork
‘A statistical investigation of the effects of Diazotroph bacteria on plant germination’

2012
Eric Doyle and Mark Kelly
CBS, Synge Street, Dublin 8
‘Simulation accuracy in the gravitational many-body problem’

2011
Alexander Amini
Castleknock College, Dublin
‘Tennis sensor data analysis’

2010
Richard O’Shea
Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co. Cork
‘A biomass fired cooking stove for developing countries’

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On a side note, some of the students from the winners in the 60's are, eh, not very young looking! https://btyoungscientist.com/past-winners/

MadYaker

MrAbyss wrote: »

Real science or woke back slapping for middle class teens?

Do you not get tired of the constant soap boxing no? Always looking for something to find fault with. It must be exhausting.

KWAG2019

There needs to be two YS competitions. One for the Social Sciences and one for the more traditional Maths, physics etc. I know that a statistical analysis was involved as it is across the Social Sciences but the focus in a more traditional YS competition would be on theory etc of statistics.

Congrats to the winners this year.

AlekSmart

Back to the future...?

2010
Richard O’Shea
Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co. Cork
‘A biomass fired cooking stove for developing countries’

This looks like a fine strong (and useful) piece of Scientific work....still relevant a decade on too.

Church on Tuesday

Looks like someone was **** at Science in school.

Hector Savage

Pseudo scientific nonsense, what was their sample size of 5-7 year olds ?
What was their relationship to them ?

- Draw an engineer, a stick figure without long hair!!! it's a man !!! they are forced to believe that all engineers are men!!!!
No doubt they have a rabid man hating feminist science teacher too ....

Pity, the kids are obviously talented and intelligent, but they have been manipulated here ...

Mad_maxx

no wonder europe is in decline

ILoveYourVibes

MrAbyss wrote: »

Real science or woke back slapping for middle class teens?

You know it's for children, right?

Irish Guitarist

They asked a group of children to draw an engineer.

Prof Barry said one of the most striking findings emerging from the research was that 96% of boys drew a male engineer while just over 50% of girls drew a female engineer.

Do five to seven year old children even know what an engineer is?
If you had asked me to draw an engineer at age five I would probably have drawn something like this.

If you could spell engineer at 5 years of age you were doing alright..

ILoveYourVibes

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

They asked a group of children to draw an engineer.



Do five to seven year old children even know what an engineer is?
If you had asked me to draw an engineer at age five I would probably have drawn something like this.

And you would have been very cute!

KevRossi

AlekSmart wrote: »

Back to the future...?



This looks like a fine strong (and useful) piece of Scientific work....still relevant a decade on too.

That is also called a rocket stove and is a technology that has been around for decades. Nothing new. Was gobsmacked when he won that.

fundi

mfceiling wrote: »

Is this the competition where the parent/teacher does the project and the kids take the credit?

And the school takes the credit. Even the parents get help doing the projects, or so it is said.

cloudatlas

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

"The individual runner’s up was project entitled “A statistical analysis of the impact of adolescent smartphone use on adolescent social anxiety and social isolation”.
The project collected data from 792 12-19-year-old post-primary students looking at levels of social anxiety, social phobia and adolescent loneliness, in addition to smartphone usage."


Young Scientist seems to be losing its way away from science alright. Science for the snowflake generation's obsession with themselves rather than the world outside them.

More often than not there is a complaint about male suicide/mental health problems being ignored by posters on here and then someone does a survey and there's complaints..... Em could mental health problems have a history?

Duckworth_Luas

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

You know it's for children, right?

This?

cloudatlas

cloudatlas wrote: »

More often than not there is a complaint about male suicide/mental health problems being ignored by posters on here and then someone does a survey and there's complaints..... Em could mental health problems have a history?

Science tends to be based on hard facts. The word itself conjures up a measure of trust.

"Social sciences" or psychology are rarely extensive in it's research and methodology... coming up with opinions rather than facts which can be verified by others if need be.

Associating it with science is a way to slide it in to be accepted in just the same way that we accept science. But it's not the same. It's not reliable.

Raising awareness of male suicide/mental health problems is important.. but not like this. This isn't about mental health. This is about giving social sciences credibility beyond what it deserves.

suicide_circus

it's a shame they went this direction with the winner, hopefully it will be business as usual next year

Mad_maxx

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Science tends to be based on hard facts. The word itself conjures up a measure of trust.

"Social sciences" or psychology are rarely extensive in it's research and methodology... coming up with opinions rather than facts which can be verified by others if need be.

Associating it with science is a way to slide it in to be accepted in just the same way that we accept science. But it's not the same. It's not reliable.

Raising awareness of male suicide/mental health problems is important.. but not like this. This isn't about mental health. This is about giving social sciences credibility beyond what it deserves.

It's about politicising the event so it chimes with the current pervasive agenda

Edgware

fundi wrote: »

And the school takes the credit. Even the parents get help doing the projects, or so it is said.

"Or so it is said" By who? The lads down in the bookies?

Hector Savage

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

They asked a group of children to draw an engineer.



Do five to seven year old children even know what an engineer is?
If you had asked me to draw an engineer at age five I would probably have drawn something like this.

Exactly and that must be a male as he has no long hair!!



utter nonsense, it's actually bad for girls, they are being told that the system is against them from the start - such rubbish..

kieran.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

And you would have been very cute!

I've never seen an engineer that happy 😊

Potential-Monke

kieran. wrote: »

I've never seen and engineer that happy ��

He's on placement.

Abel Ruiz

spurious wrote: »

Ah yes, AH in all it's glory.

Terrible pity they are boys or the usual misogynists could slither out with their tuppence worth too.

Are you okay?
Seems like you're looking for something that isn't there?

vriesmays

Deleted User wrote: »

If you could spell engineer at 5 years of age you were doing alright..

If you could spell all right correctly you would too.

AndrewJRenko

mikhail wrote: »

I was talking with a fella who's been a judge on it. He mentioned several schools in Cork are enthusiastic supporters of this, and matchmake students with mentors from the universities and elsewhere when it's called for. I asked him about the case you referred to, and he was satisfied that entries like that get grilled pretty well to make sure they did it themselves. He recalled some examples of projects that were very impressive themselves, but where the student was weak under questioning and was marked down. I am not without some reservations, but I don't think it's reasonable to refer with certainty like that to some kid as a cheat just based on the fact that his ma mentored him.

Ah here, we don't need any of that reality here. The alt-right lads on Boards who saw a 60 second piece on the research are in a far better position to judge the project than the PhD judging panel who spent time reading the report and interviewing the students.

vriesmays

vriesmays wrote: »

If you could spell all right correctly you would too.

Yeah, well..whatever..

Arghus

Read about the winners yesterday. Thought it won't have really happened until some randomer starts a thread giving out about it in AH and 50% of the replies mention the word "snowflake" in there somewhere and the rest complain that it's not "real science", unaware of the irony that it shows they don't know what they are talking about.

Millionaire only not

I guess they won’t be making the rich list or going to Silicon Valley any time soon !

vriesmays

Arghus wrote: »

Read about the winners yesterday. Thought it won't have really happened until some randomer starts a thread giving out about it in AH and 50% of the replies mention the word "snowflake" in there somewhere and the rest complain that it's not "real science", unaware of the irony that it shows they don't know what they are talking about.

You think asking a small group of kids from the same area fixed questions and interpolating these results should apply around the world is real science.

Quantum Erasure

any link to the study?

Padraig Mor

Arghus wrote: »

Read about the winners yesterday. Thought it won't have really happened until some randomer starts a thread giving out about it in AH and 50% of the replies mention the word "snowflake" in there somewhere and the rest complain that it's not "real science", unaware of the irony that it shows they don't know what they are talking about.

Social "science" isn't real science.

Yours,
A real scientist.

MoonUnit75

Is there a good summary or actual paper on the winning entry that people can read? Is it not bizarre that, according to my quick count, judges in the 'soft science' section outnumber those in the fields where research is on much more solid ground? It's almost like they were hoping a touchy-feely-goody-goody project would win.

cloudatlas

Deleted User wrote: »

Science tends to be based on hard facts. The word itself conjures up a measure of trust.

"Social sciences" or psychology are rarely extensive in it's research and methodology... coming up with opinions rather than facts which can be verified by others if need be.

Associating it with science is a way to slide it in to be accepted in just the same way that we accept science. But it's not the same. It's not reliable.

Raising awareness of male suicide/mental health problems is important.. but not like this. This isn't about mental health. This is about giving social sciences credibility beyond what it deserves.

Please it's not the inclusion of this category that is getting the heckles up it's the subject of the project that is pissing people off you can see that in most of the comments under the twitter and the reference to 'gender' and 'wokeness'.

Montage of Feck

kieran. wrote: »

I've never seen an engineer that happy 😊

He got a handy job with the council. ....Oh **** I just assumed the gender of a stick figure.

cloudatlas

cloudatlas wrote: »

Please it's not the inclusion of this category that is getting the heckles up it's the subject of the project that is pissing people off you can see that in most of the comments under the twitter and the reference to 'gender' and 'wokeness'.

Please? Err. No. I, and many others (as seen by posts within this thread), are annoyed at it's inclusion within an event dedicated to promoting and encouraging an interest in science for young people.

cloudatlas

Deleted User wrote: »

Please? Err. No. I, and many others (as seen by posts within this thread), are annoyed at it's inclusion within an event dedicated to promoting and encouraging an interest in science for young people.

Behavioural science has always been included in the competition. All of a sudden everyone is a scientist now in the comments. Social science project wins an award. After hours: 'Suddenly I'm an astrophysicist'.

cloudatlas

cloudatlas wrote: »

Behavioural science has always been included in the competition. All of a sudden everyone is a scientist now in the comments. Social science project wins an award. After hours: 'Suddenly I'm an astrophysicist'.

Really? I hadn't realised that. Thanks for the correction.

And no, I'm generally pretty clueless about science. (I have a Bachelor in Psychology, and other degrees in Business) Although I still wouldn't consider Behavioral science to be a science in the same manner as physics, or chemistry.

Arghus

Padraig Mor wrote: »

Social "science" isn't real science.

Yours,
A real scientist.

Uh, oh. A real scientist.

Look, I can only claim to be a random person on the Internet, but for my appeal to authority I'll go by this definition from The Science Council in the UK:

"Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence."

Quite a broad definition I know, but not quite as broad as just junking everything that doesn't fall within your definition of what real science is. Not that you defined real science, of course, but maybe only real scientists can truly know that.