Isn’t this the million dollar question in college admissions? And leads to all kinds of mental health issues in our students, as well as wasted time and money that could be better spent on just being a teenager.
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Lumiere sounds plenty shady and is funneling papers to shady publications.
From the article:
In our experience, we have noticed that [the Journal of Student Research] nearly never gives edits, and students always just advance straight to being accepted.”
—Manas Pant, a publication strategy associate at Lumiere Education
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I noticed the same. Revise-and-resubmit is a typical part of the academic publication process, even for top-notch scholars. If articles are being published without edits, these are just junior-level publication mills (the likes of which also exist in academia, but the difference is that scholars are better equipped than admissions officers to know how to spot them). The sooner this trend is revealed for what it is, the better.
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I’ve read exactly one strong essay about research done as a HS student.
It described honestly “Nothing happened in 10 weeks” (that’s reality). It dealt with the boredom of waiting for a reaction that never came (grad students playing poker, professor dropping by “just in case”, the undergrads watching “Friends” reruns in quadruple, compressed time using "millions of dollars in computing power to watch an old network sitcom) and it concluded with a pretty hilarious summary of “here are my contributions to science”.
If HS kids use their “research” time to realize that they need a few years of academic and lab coursework to develop useful skills; AND they need to understand that research is iterative- you aren’t discovering gravity, you are building on a few hundred years of other people’s work, hopefully with something insightful and replicable; AND they approach it as they would any other EC (wanting to do a good job, get along with their co-workers, just like the kid heading off to his shift at the Pizza Parlor or the kid working as a lifeguard at the town pool) then I think it’s great.
But on CC and in real life I see a dangerous fetishization of research. As if a 17 year old is going to walk into a grizzled professor’s office one day and say “Here’s the genetic key to pancreatic cancer. Got to go pick out my outfit for prom, but call me if you have questions” AND that the 10 or 12 or 20 weeks spent in the lab looking at genetic variations in pancreatic cells is more than it really is (i.e. a member of a 30 person team who got assigned a specific breed of mouse out of the 500 breeds being tested for one very significant but rare mutation). Somehow the kids essays gloss over the 29 other people- 10 of whom are post-doc’s, 10 of whom are PhD candidates, 9 of whom are college seniors, ALL of whom have been trying patiently to teach the HS kid what not to do to screw up results and no, you can’t bring Snapple into the lab, and no, Birkenstocks are not closed toed shoes.
So go do research HS kids. And come back understanding how much patience is required to participate in a 10 year research effort, and in your 10 weeks you are seeing a very tiny, likely insignificant snapshot because most of the cool stuff happens in year 8 and you are there in year 2.
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That definitely sounds like connections, and if you’ve got them, by all means, use what you’ve got. I’m not doubting what you say. I just define the term “connections” differently.
No research professor within 100 miles of where I live would do this for an unknown high school student. They all have graduate students and undergraduates with grad school ambitions clamoring for more positions than they have available. If they opened the floodgates to random high schoolers, their labs would be chaos.
I have one good friend and a family member who are both research professors. They don’t live in my market, but I’ve been hesitant to have DS ask to work with them because I know how sought out they are. So, no U Penn for DS.
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Nope, no connections. I don’t know this person at all (I have never even met nor spoken to this professor), nor do I have any connections to the university where he works. Nor do I work in even remotely the same field as this person.
My daughter is active in a certain EC and through her activities she made this person’s acquaintance. This was entirely on her own initiative - no family connections involved whatsoever and no one smoothing the path. Just her own hard work plus a little luck. Maybe a lot of luck. But no connections.
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I also wanted to log in a reality check (for parents of HS kids who are encouraging their kid to “do research”).
Kids want the dramatic stuff. But research goes on every day, everywhere. In my town, there is a team (some employees, some from a university in the area, some funded by a foundation who are specifically staffed on this project) investigating wetlands, swampland, local marshes. They are ALWAYS happy to take on volunteers (i.e. “researchers”) because the work is very hands on. What are they researching? Important environmental stuff- does plastic waste interfere with frog breeding grounds? Is there sunscreen residue on the feet of baby terns and if so, what impact does it have (behaviorally, physically)? How many chicks are born per momma duck and has the number changed in the last ten years as the area has become more urban with less grassland and more concrete and chemical runoff?
But when I suggest projects like this (and there are lots of them) to local kids that I know in real life, they sniff. They want “Real research”, at a name brand university, inside an air conditioned lab, to get their name on a “real publication”, not standing in waders testing water samples or assessing salinity in grass clippings.
The town next to mine is doing “real research” on traffic patterns and exhaust. The paid engineers would LOVE extra hands (the work is tedious, just like “real research” except it’s outside). One more town over is doing “real research” examining access to primary healthcare by immigrants.
I could write a book about all the research opportunities which a HS kid could participate in, just in my area, without knowing a single professor, PI, “famous person” or Nobel prize winner. Maybe I should.
But coming up with a hypothesis on why asthma is diagnosed at a more advanced stage in immigrants-- regardless of their legal status-- vs. a control group of native born-- and what the health care system can do to remedy that- seems like a real contribution to society even if nobody is getting their name on anything. Just a meeting with the heads of pulmonology at the three main hospitals in the region, and a list of suggested fixes…
It’s still research!
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I think it is also worth noting that students can participate in research projects or learn research skills in many different fields. There seems to be a big focus on this board about research opportunities in the sciences. However, there are research questions that students might find interesting to explore in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts as well.
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Personally, I think the first option sounds a lot more fun! Sign me up 
Which town and which state are you from? I really want to participate in these kind of research. Not the one that said “I found a biomarker in some cancer out of a hundred different biomarkers”. I want to do hands on research in the field.
This sort of “research opportunity” has been a connections thing for a while. Parents know someone or other network efforts to get kid working in research. Nor it seems it can also be bought. Money is the great equalizer in a way.
Call your city hall; ask for the department which handles environmental issues. Start there. They are likely understaffed and underfunded.
Call the city hall of the five towns closest to you. Some municipalities have more of a focus on solid waste (what are our recycling options, what do they cost, what is the impact of getting that stuff out of landfills); some are more worried about toxins leaching into the drinking water (if there is a reservoir in your town that’s likely a heavily researched subject); some have a long list of “projects we’d love to do if only we could come up with the research that showed this is a problem”-- like what do homeowners do with old paint cans, where do half-used cans of insecticide go, how much money does the town spend unclogging sewers when they get stuffed with plastic grocery bags and what would happen if we banned those bags, etc.
I live in a coastal town, so people are starting to become sensitive to erosion, climate change, the impact on fish when you pour toxic chemicals down your drain instead of disposing them at an official disposal site, etc. But people are slow to change. Nobody seemed to care about the fish habitat problem- but those cute little birds? When they stop nesting people notice. And when the “smelly” marshland gets developed- but then the houses on the former marsh get flooded twice a year during a heavy rain- people begin to ask “did the town do any research on marshlands before issuing building permits?”
Where is the research!
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Contact through an EC is a connection. The EC is the connection.
Regardless, gaining access to real research labs through connections (professional, school-related, or personal) is not the topic of the ProPublica article. Those services are more pay-to-play and the publications are hardly the New England Journal of Medicine or the like.
My DS has contacts to two professionals who are directly related to his major of interest, too. They are in applied science, not research science, but that’s just what is available to him. It’s perfectly good to use what you’ve got in front of you.
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Well, then everything is a connection. Getting a recommendation from a teacher relies on having connections to teachers. Joining a club at school means having a connection to a school and perhaps contacting the club president to find out when the meetings are, which is also then a connection. And I mean, sure, I guess. But usually when people talk about students using connections they mean parents using their networks to get their kids opportunities not available to others because they are predicated on the parents’ connections. And based on your last paragraph (below) that seems to be what you also are referring to:
But if by “having connections” you just mean that the student goes out in the world, shows their work and participates in activities, meets people, and explores new opportunities as they arise, then sure, I guess it’s all connections then.
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There was no “science” involved in the successful Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign to lower speed limits.
The “science” was the observation by first responders that many of the people they pull from the wreckage of cars are clearly drunk or impaired. The “science” was the data collected that showed that a drunk driver driving at 80 miles per hour is more likely to be involved in a fatal accident than one driving 30 miles per hour. And that law enforcement was sometimes reluctant to stop and ticket someone driving 30 miles per hour- even if they were driving erratically- but usually had no problem stopping someone driving 80 miles per hour.
So the leap (which not everyone agrees with, since of course everyone is entitled to their own statistics and facts) was made which is if you can’t stop people from drinking and driving, a first step is to get them ticketed and pulled off the road once they exceed a newly reduced speed limit.
Sometimes applied science saves more lives than the fancy stuff, Supportivemom!
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I know this well. I work with low income people who need affordable housing. I don’t publish research on this topic, though. I don’t have time to research it. I have to actually deal with these people and help them.
I did publish peer-reviewed scholarly scientific research many years ago and it’s a very different thing. Apples and oranges, really. And what this article is talking about is neither.
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My point was that HS kids seem to think that the only activity worth doing involves millions of dollars of laboratory equipment and a “name” professor.
And I’m pointing out that if it’s a choice between benchwarming for the summer, or doing something useful to advance society’s knowledge on an important and meaningful topic, perhaps the less glamorous option is the way to go.
Not talking about adults in the working world. Every time a colleague says “hey, we should publish this” I groan. And remind them that “getting stuff done” is why they get paid.
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Not all that new though. I’ve been hearing of this from Bay Area friends and colleagues for at least the past five years. It has become fairly common among the wealthy there (who are also paying upwards of $25k for college consultants). Now I’ve heard of this gaining popularity elsewhere around the country.
And yes, it can cost well over $10k (in addition to consultant costs). Depending on the “package” you purchase you can apparently get anything from just an opportunity to participate in research to being first author in a publication + presenting at a conference.
@YoLo2 pls PM me
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Some Ph.D. recipients, in moments of candor, will question whether they contributed anything truly original to their fields in their theses.
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