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Can children produce science?

The field of bee behavior does not usually draw the attention of the mainstream media. And a recent study on Bombus terrestris, a species of bumblebee, would not have gone beyond specialist circles if it had not been planned, carried out and written by children

GONZALO CASINO | MARCH 3rd, 2011

In late 2010, the journal Biology Letters, published by The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, received a manuscript about a study on the visual recognition of color patterns by Bombus terrestris, one of the most abundant species of bumblebees in Europe. Although the article was somewhat atypical, it was accepted with no major problems since it made a definite contribution to this field of biology, in addition to its originality and scientific rigor, and it was published on the online edition of the magazine.

Evolutionary biologist Brian Charlesworth, director of Biology Letters and a member of the Royal Society, was aware that the work his magazine had published represented a scientific milestone. For the first time, school children had authored a scientific paper. Guided by their teachers and a professional scientist, they had been able to design an experiment, perform it and write the corresponding scientific paper detailing the results.

They studied the ability of bumblebees to discriminate between flowers which had nectar and those which did notThe paper, entitled Blackawton bees, refers to a village of 650 inhabitants, situated in the U.K. district of Devon, in which 25 schoolchildren between 8 and 10 years old made an in-depth study of the ability of bumblebees to discriminate between flowers with had nectar and those which did not, a crucial skill for the fitness and survival of these insects in addition to the pollination of flowers.

‘Cool’ and fun

"We discovered that bumblebees use a combination of color and spatial relationships to determine the color of the flower from which they feed”, the young scientists wrote in the article, before adding, “We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you can do things that nobody has done before.”

The idea that a group of school children could carry out real scientific research came from Beau Lotto, a professor of neuroscience at University College London, whose main research interest is the analysis of what, how and why we see what we do through the study of human beings, bees and robots. Lotto wondered if children were able to form scientific questions, design experiments, test the results and write up their findings, and he contacted Dave Strudwick, director of Blackawton Primary School, who gave the green light to the project I, scientist.

The article Blackawton bees, written in the language of children and accompanied by hand-drawn figures and tables and colored paintings made by students, shows not only that the bees have enough intelligence to solve a puzzle, but also that scientific thinking and the scientific method are not reserved for adults with years of specialized training.

How to solve a puzzle

The children proposed that for the bumblebees locating flowers with nectar was like solving a puzzle of colors and locations, and they devised an experiment to see if the insects were able to solve it. “Our conclusion is that bees can solve puzzles by learning complex rules, but sometimes they make mistakes. They can also work together (indirectly) to solve a puzzle”, the authors of the paper wrote.

The creative weight of the study fell on the children, its true architects Although the final wording of the article is the work of Lotto, the researcher said that what he did was transcribe the words of children. Lotto was also responsible for training the bees, a precondition to the completion of the experiment. But the creative weight of the study fell on the children, its true architects.

The article also lacks the obligatory references to other scientific works to contextualize the findings. This lack was made up for, however, by a note published alongside the article by two researchers, the cognitive psychologist Laurence T. Maloney and biologist Natalie Hempel de Ibarra. In their note, the scientists point out that "the experiments are modest in scope but are designed correctly and intelligently and performed with appropriate controls".

PLAY AND CREATIVITY
Science as a creative activity is very similar to a game. Among other things, games allow humans and other mammals to discover and create new relationships. Arguably, science is nothing more than a game with simple rules (the scientific method), and its players can discover new patterns and connections, thus extending our collective understanding of nature and humankind. This is precisely what the school children did in the project I, scientist by making science a game. Beau Lotto writes in the article that this study “shows science in its truest (most innocent) form, and thus makes explicit that which science has in common with art and, indeed, all creative activities”.

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