Austin Energy Regional Science Festival

This was my fifth year judging the projects entered in the Behavioral and Social Sciences category.  The field was crowded. Eight teams of judges were assigned to the 57 entrants. Each team chose one participant to advance to the second round of judging. Among those eight, we chose first through fifth place awards. The top three were advanced to the state competition. In addition, a select committee of judges chose Best of Fair awards from all categories. Those also advanced, of course. Various organizations, including Austin Energy, granted special prizes to outstanding projects. Although we judges adhered to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair standards, the independents could apply their own metrics.

My Choice for 1st Place

With any large set, the elements can be sorted many ways. With years of experience, the process committee has a pretty good insight into the abstracts. So, the sets tend to be more or less even. It was the “less” side of that that I found difficult. We know that it is likely that any one group could have more projects that were superior to any projects from some other group. Yet, each conveniently chosen group in Behavioral had only one project allowed to advance to the next round.  The same method applied to other categories. On the other hand, computers and robotics were under-represented this year.

It is also clear that some schools invest a lot of resources in this. Over the past five years, I have seen interesting projects fall just a bit short for lack of mentoring. 

My choice for 2nd Place
Buried by the process

Judging begins with individuals. We then get together and seek consensus. If you advocate well for your choices, you can carry the day for your prodigies. On the other hand, social capital pays dividends; and a judge who is a psychology professor necessarily has more of it. Judging is a gestalt, not a tally.

The underlying problem is that all of these projects are winners. Eighty-five percent of success is showing up. Decisions are made by those who show up. These 2200 from 3^rd through 12^th grades in 12 counties representing 21 school districts, plus charter schools, private schools, and home schools, were the ones who did the work.  It is easy to say that the median grade is a C+, but the median grade at a science fair is really an A-minus.

A popular subject
handled with finesse
but lost in the process

Behavioral and Social Science Middle School Winners.

• 1^st Sophie Polidoro, Canyon Ridge, “How does text color affect retention?”
• 2^nd Cameron Ferweda, Canyon Ridge, “How do certain foods affect peoples' reaction time and memory?”
• 3^rdJessica Cummings, Canyon Ridge, “How does age affect how people focus on abnormalities in their environment?”
• 4^th Allie Cermak, Round Rock Christian Academy MS, “Circadian Rhythm Your Brain's Clock”
• 5^th Robinson Lopez, Dripping Springs, “Picture Perfect”

Behavioral and Social Science High School Winners.

So much talent crammed in
next to each other.

• 1^st Curtis Harrison and Nicole Deere, Vista Ridge, “The Effect of the Sensation of Fear versus Reward on Learning Capabilities, Short-Term and Long-Term Memory in Procambarus clarkii,”
• 2^nd Travis Cantwell, Veritas Academy, “The Fatigue Effect: Aural and Cognitive Exhaustion in Children with Cochlear Implants”
• 3^rd Joselyne Flores-Vivas and Aimee Heim, Vista Ridge, “Effects of Rubik's Cube Design on Speed”
• 4^th Sadaf Karim, Renaissance Academy, “How Do Fears Change By Age and Gender?”
• 5^th Kristin Hauck, Bowie High School, “The Effect of External Factors on Short Term Memory”

 The American Psychological Association gave a special award to Harrison and Deere for their work with the crayfish, Procambarus clarkii.  BioAustin recognized Cameron Ferweda’s research. Thomas Wintenburg of Vista Ridge entered a mathematics project on “Reducing the Cost of U.S. Military Bases.” He was singled out by the U.S. Air Force, Austin Energy, and the Mu Theta Alpha mathematics honor society.

Travis Cantwell's original research deserves special attention. Children with certain hearing deficits are give cochlear implants. It solves the hearing problem. The secondary consequence is cognitive fatigue. Even as a child, Cantwell noticed that his sister tired easily. We judges argued his research project back and forth. The problem was that we could not have two first places. So, push came to shove. The bottom line was that his advocate pushed when I shoved. The crayfish won. It was not fair. We should call them science un-fairs.

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An Abundance of Talent: the 2015 Austin Energy Regional Science Festival

For the fourth time, I served as a judge for behavioral and social sciences in our local science fair.  Again, I met an array of talented and motivated teenagers.  They were intelligent (of course), actively curious about the world around them, willing to step out from the crowd and put themselves in the scales to be judged.  They asked interesting questions and pursued the answers wherever the data took them.  But they were, after all, children.  Some of them assumed far too easily that an experiment that does not validate the hypothesis is therefore a failure.  They never heard of Karl Popper.  That failing is not theirs, but of their mentors – or the lack of them. 

Middle school (junior high) presentation
on noise levels in the school building

 I am pleased and proud to have argued for the first place winner in senior high school  behavioral and social sciences. (See all of the Awards here.) One of the judges said that when he challenged her on a point of mathematics, she did not have the answer.  I responded with some history: last year, she asked every one of the mathematics and science teachers in her high school for help with statistics and she got no replies to her emails. So, she went to the university; and some UT doctoral candidates tutored her in statistics.  So, too, this year, did she seek and find outside help in order to extend and expand her work in statistical methods.  Personally, I was the one who was challenged.  I got an A-minus in my undergraduate class in statistics.  After reading her abstract this year, I downloaded several tutorials: she knew more than I did.

 

Middle School enquiry into which advertising
message draws the most responses

We expect a lot from kids. The German word for “teenager” is Halbstark: half-strong.  That speaks to the core of the problem in a way that the Latin “adolescent” (becoming adult) does not.  My daughter had a mole on her wrist; and she would show me how it moved around as she grew.  For them, life is an intense process.  We judge them as if they were adults.  As a geometer would say, it is obvious by inspection that they are not. Yet, objectively, nothing less is fair to them in the intellectual pursuit of science.

 

Classical, country, dub step, meditation, or pop:
does any help you concentrate on a task?

“If you all were graded on a 100-point scale, 91 would be failing.”  As often as I said it, I could see that it did not sink in, not this year, not in the previous years. This year, I asked one panicked entrant if any other display was clearly head and shoulders better than hers.  The person with the neighboring display chimed in: “The right answer is ‘No.’” 

 

Middle School entry: What is Your "Pawsonality"?
Can a psychological profile predict your preference for a pet?

It is not just kids at science fairs.  I enter and I judge museum quality exhibits at numismatic conventions.  (“Four out of five? How dare they!”)  In the West Wing episodes that bridge the first and second seasons, President Jed Bartlett says that decisions are made by those who show up.  In this context, the future of science, engineering, and technology belongs to – and will be claimed by – those who enter the competitive field of scientific research.

 

Another middle school entry on the Stroop Effect.
This took second place.
The value in this for the learner is figuring out how to
create a novel experiment and enter it in a competition.

The best of them do it alone; but they all deserve mentoring.  That 9-point gap between first and last could easily be closed by a working technician, engineer, or scientist who made the time to volunteer with a school starting in August or September. It is not a matter of showing them how, but of asking science-talented pupils those tough questions early on. 

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The Austin Energy Regional Science Festival 2014

Teaching Science Through Science Fiction

Austin Energy Regional Science Festival 2014

Bright young minds are always fun to be around. This was my third year judging the junior high school and senior high school entrants at our regional science fair.  This time, I also judged both upper and lower elementary school participants. My area is behavioral and social sciences.  I worked closely with a dozen other professionals as we judged about 70 junior and senior contestants. It is a learning experience for everyone. 

The Austin Energy Regional Science Festival website is here

I had the opportunity to review the works of several young scholars whose research made the awards. Among them were third, fourth, and fifth place middle schoolers Will Pasquarette ("How does the type of music affect the ability to recall a memory?"), Dara Christensen ("How does the sense of smell affect your memory?"), and Mark Holstrum ("Notetaking").  I also judged for seniors Katelynn Marsan ("Effects of Biased Verbal Instructions on Student Performance") and Saloni Gyani ("Alteration of Memory and Perception through Optogenetics"), who took first and second place honors.  Ms. Marsan also garnered a special Superintendent's Award. Ms. Saloni was recognized for a special award by the American Psychological Association.

But "85% of success is showing up," said Woody Allen.  Of the nearly 3,000 entrants, I saw only a few who were unprepared. Still, they showed up, saw the process, learned from their peers, and discovered what is expected. The requirements are not trivial. Students, parents, and teachers are responsible for many significant and official forms and filings; and more often, it is the adults, not the kids, who failed to address the details.  

This year about 800 junior and senior high schoolers
and 2000 elementary schoolers participated.

That speaks to several levels of challenge. Cream rises, and the winners are usually obvious by inspection; but the distance from first to fifth is short, and the gap from fifth to "thanks for showing up" is even narrower. One of the outstanding entrants in one of my sessions was bumped down twice by successive rounds of review by other judges. Nothing was wrong with the student's work. Others were judged to be better.  

Also, it is a fact that schools with fewer resources field fewer contestants. That said, one of my teams was shocked to find that one  student needed to know more about statistics, so she sent emails to all of the mathematics and science teachers in her school, and got no replies. She got better responses from UT graduate students: several of them showed her the math that she needed to teach herself.  

Public school, private school,
and home-schooled students all competed.

Another barrier is that sociology is considered the idiot child of the science family with the S in STEM being redundant of TEM. The truth is that social science education includes the scientific method as a rubric, expressly, consciously (even self-consciously), and repeatedly. Moreover, social scientists are taught the evolutions of the paradigms that brought us to our current state. The physical sciences seldom teach the scientific method explicitly. Worse, they deliver a product that is wrapped for consumption as if it were always this way. From Ampere to Gauss to Maxwell to Heisenberg, it is a straight line. They never learn the original statement of Ohm's Law - or that it was rejected by the scientific community for personal reasons.  (See "Is Physics a Science?" here on NecessaryFacts.)

So, while physics and astronomy, the chemistries and the engineerings all enjoy the benefit of judging by degreed professionals, the standards are not so strict in behavioral and social sciences.  

It is true that any literate and intelligent person can follow the judging forms.  The questions we ask and the answers we listen for are easy to understand.  The difficulties come from differentiating among the honored winners, first through fifth, and distinguishing them from the very many worthies who also showed up.  

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Science Fairs and Science Frauds (2012)

Science Fair Science Fraud (2013)

Science Fair Science Fraud

With over 2500 entrants, the occurrence of misconduct is a statistical likelihood.  I served as a judge for Behavioral and Social Sciences and I am pretty sure that I reviewed one of the problems.  The questions only came to me later. 

(Almost) every science fair entrant deserves special recognition.  Woody Allen famously quipped that 85% of success is showing up. The great majority of these kids made that mark.  The scoring and ranking was generally close.  Identifying the first place works was effortless as were the ones that ranked lower than fifth.  But overall, not much (if anything objective) separated third from fourth from fifth place.  We worked by consensus and discussion to discover and validate the rankings.  As a regional science fair the exhibits already passed previous judgings.  

Biotech and Life sciences broadly dominated the science fair. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, and computer science were present, of course, but animal science, plant science, environmental management, bioengineering, biochemistry, behavioral and social sciences, cellular and molecular biology, medicine and health eclipsed the physical sciences.

Among the many entrants, these were some of 1st through 5th place winners in the junior and senior divisions: 

• The Effect of Temperature on the Activity of Catalase
• The Effects Of Various Light Conditions On Bioluminescent Marine Dinoflagellates
• How To Most Effectively Grow Algae For Biofuel
• Biodegradable Packaging: A Cleaner Future
• Zombie Plankton Apocalypse
• Children's Blood Pressure
• The effect of Capsaicin levels on E.coli bacterial growth
• The Anti-Microbial Properties of Sauerkraut Ingredients on E. coli
• Are horses auditory or visual learners?
• Animal Lipid Vs. Vegetable Lipid Based Mascara
• The Effect of Ginkgo biloba on Protein and Genetic Expression of C. Elegans
• Desalination Using a Microbial Fuel Cell
• Disease and Drought Resistance of Tomato Plants When Treated with Bacillus subtilis

Over all, I was greatly impressed. 

The Austin Energy Regional Science Festival is an affiliate of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.  Therefore, we comply with all of those rules and guidelines. 

Scientific fraud and misconduct are not condoned at any level of research or competition. Such practices include plagiarism, forgery, use or presentation of other researcher’s work as one’s own, and fabrication of data. Fraudulent projects will fail to qualify for competition in affiliated fairs and the Intel ISEF.

My problem was in the Junior Division.  Judging was on Thursday.  This morning (Saturday), I was pretty sure that the entrant did not employ the equipment, and did not actually run the experiment.  They made the whole thing up.  I asked about their Informed Consent forms and they said that they called someone who said that the forms were not necessary.  That should have tripped an alarm, but in the crush of judging, I only kept my questions to myself.  This morning, I added that to the evidence.  In my professional opinion as a card-carrying criminologist, this was an example of scientific misconduct and research fraud. 

Unfortunately, this problem is nowhere in the many forms we receive.  In the verbal briefings, it was said that in the past some students did not understand that they had plagiarized someone else’s work. Nothing like planfully competent research fraud was addressed this year or last.  Last year, I found a different problem, an example of the mass mediated hyper reality of crime. 

What I do about this, whom I tell, and what I recommend are as yet undetermined.

Previously on Necessary Facts
Science Fairs and Science Frauds (2012)

Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers
Misconduct in Science and Research
Another Case of Fraud in University Research
20% of Scientists Are Crooks
Four Books about Bad Science

Also on Necessary Facts

• Criminality in Scientific Research: Why Scientists Go Wrong; And Why the Wrong People Become Scientists
• CSI: Flint 2011 - "Who Guards the Guardians?" (Super Science Friday presentation to Middle School science students on fraud and misconduct in research and junk science in the courtroom.)