John Mashey alerted me to this news story from the online Beeville Bee-Picayune via mySouTex.com:
R.A. Hall fourth-grader is science national champion
Caption from mySouTex: R.A. Hall fourth-grader Julisa Castillo (center) is the 2010 national junior division champion for the National Science Fair. Her project, “Disproving Global Warming,” beat more than 50,000 other projects from students all over the nation. She is pictured with her father, J.R. Castillo (left), and R.A. Hall Principal Martina Villarreal. Read more: mySouTex.com - R A Hall fourth grader is science national champion
R.A. Hall Elementary School fourth-grader Julisa Castillo has been named junior division champion for the 2010 National Science Fair.
Her project, “Disproving Global Warming,” beat more than 50,000 other projects submitted by students from all over the U.S.
Julisa originally entered her project in her school science fair before sending it to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be judged at the national level.
The NSF panel of judges included former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, 14 recipients of the President’s National Medal of Science, and four former astronauts.
“Before she sent it off, she just had to add more details, citations for her research, and the amount of hours she spent working on it,” said Julisa’s father, J.R. Castillo.
In addition to a plaque, trophy and medal, Julisa has won an all-expenses-paid trip to Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., which she plans to attend this summer.
Read more: mySouTex.com – R A Hall fourth grader is science national champion
The blog of the North County Times (California) has doubts. There are signs of hoax. While the Beeville Independent School District does have an R. A. Hall elementary, the list of winners of last December’s science fair does not include Ms. Castillo. To go from not placing at the local school to winning the national would be quite a feat!
I suspect an error somewhere, perhaps in the title of the project, or in the understanding of what the title implies.
Most of the obvious hoax signs check out against a hoax: Beeville exists (improbably Texan as the name may be), R. A. Hall is an elementary school in Beeville ISD. The principal of R. A. Hall is Martina Villareal. Beeville has a guy named J. R. Castillo (listed as Julisa’s father in the photo caption), and his photos at the site promoting his music shows photos of a guy who looks a lot like the guy in the photo here. Most hoaxers wouldn’t go so far for accuracy on details.
Fun little mystery. I have made inquiries with the newspaper, and hope to follow up with the school. Stay tuned. There may be a great little science project somewhere in here.
_____________
See update here: Quick summary, big title, project not quite filling those shoes. I’ve made inquiries at the paper and school district without answers; there’s more to the story, but not much. A good project with a misleading title, for those who would be misled by a 4th grade science fair project.
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[…]Beeville fourth grader disproves global warming? « Millard Fillmore's Bathtub[…]…
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It’s so funny. It can be a proven fiction. But I still have numerous people telling me a 4th grade girl in Texas was able to disprove global warming. When I tell them it was a hoax, they insist that since they have not seen or heard any reports about it being disproven…it must be true. I suppose their next fallback position — if it is more broadly reported — will be that it’s still not a hoax, because Fox, Newsmax and World Net Daily haven’t retracted it.
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The woman in the picture is the principal of RA Hall.
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I feel sorry for this little girl. Unfortunately I know the dad, he lies about everthing including having a 2 doctoral degrees from the university of texas. I hate that it took involving his little daughter before his web of lies over the last 10 years have come back to haunt him. He “just wants to put this behind him”, just like all the other people he has left in a wake of lies. He had made outrageous claims in the past about record deals and his eventual fame, leaving supporters and night club owners in his wake. I always knew it would come back to haunt him, I am sorry it had to involve his innocent daughter, maybe this will teach him a lesson.
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Shame on that father.
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The father has admitted authoring the hoax: http://www.mysoutex.com/view/full_story/7901678/article-Father-says-he-is-sorry-for-science-fair-hoax?
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cbp nails it. What does it say about warming skeptics that the best science paper in the last two years is a fourth grade science project from Beeville, Texas?
This is shaping up as a little tragedy for the Castillo family, though. Whoever put up this hoax, if it turns out to be that, should be forced to read thermometers in Death Valley for a few years.
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Michael Tobis has received a reply from the National Science Foundation confirming that the entire thing is a hoax: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/06/nsf-letter-fraudulent.html. Also, some people at Reddit are starting to take a look at the father and have uncovered what seem to be some red flags: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ccoct/the_fake_science_fair_award_what_sort_of_person/.
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Pity its hoax really, sounds like this girl’s essay could well be the pinnacle of global warming skeptical literature.
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The story is falling apart very rapidly now:
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-low.html
Given that Marc Morano (of Swiftboating and Sen. Inhofe’s Committee) has been on blogs saying “I talked to the principle [sic]. The story is true. Some details may not be quite right.”, I am inclined to think Morano’s gun is smoking on this one….
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I sent an email to the NSF so maybe they will reply.
It does seem quite nonsensical.
For one thing, she sent in her experiment – at all major science fairs I have heard of, the students are there to discuss it.
Even more disappointing is Mr Fike’s assumption that Gore would not have participated if he thought a climate change skeptic would win. I am sure that
1) Gore did not have access to list of experiments before agreeing to participate
2) if run by the NSF, Gore would have no influence over choice of judges
Any major science fair would have lots of different experiments and picking judges based on their thoughts about one issue is pretty silly.
I’m sorry, but that is not the way science should, and usually does, operate.
Can anyone read anything on plaque in photo?
This just can’t be real.
jah
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Brad Fikes, I think this is exactly the sort of thing Al Gore would enjoy robustly — especially had she actually disproven warming. Gore’s a good sport, if nothing else (he’s also extremely competent at turning good science into good policy, and translating science into Common Human Language, in my experience).
See update here:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/maybe-4th-grader-disproves-much-warming-in-beeville-not-entire-planet/
It sounds like a good project to me, but one with an overly ambitious title.
John Mashey: Great thoughts.
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[…] But we can find more information on what would be an astounding, groundbreaking study by 4th grader Juli…. […]
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“[T]he real names of global warming are Waste and Greed”
-Wendell Berry, from Harper’s Magazine
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A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF AGE AT WHICH AGW CAN BE CREDIBLY DISPROVED.
Do people recall Ponder the Maunder, with then 15-year-old Kristen Byrnes the superheroine of climate anti-science? She was widely promoted.
She disproved AGW (before taking physics, calculus, statistics, presumably)?
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/ is still going, although Kristen stopped being involved a while ago, but it is still run by her “stepfather” (assuming he ever married Kristen’s mother). She even got on NPR.
It’s now called the Climate Debate Research Group.
This was in 2007, when she was 15, I think.
Now in 2010, we see that a 4th-grader has disproved AGW.
I assume 4th-grade means about 10.
Defying the wrath of those that might insist that 2 points are insufficient to obtain a statistically valid trend, since others do this all the time, and since I am at least not cherry-picking, but using the entire data set:
2007 15
2010 10
I compute the slope is -1.66 year of age per calendar year, although I did no further analysis.
Put another way, in about 6 years, some unborn baby will disprove AGW just before birth, presumably via psychic means, which have been explored elsewhere, although usually in the post-death direction, not the pre-birth direction.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/05/eric_fnorrd_and_his_ouija_boar.php
When it happens, this seems an ideal article to be written by Tom Valentine (purveryor of black helicopters, once “miracles editor” of The National Tattler, writer of the 1987 ozone article in MAGNETS, one of many mysterious citations in Wegman Report.)
Morano can then publicize it.
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I’m the North County Times reporter who wrote that post. Thanks for following up!
The biggest red flag to me is the supposed participation of Al Gore. I don’t think Gore would take part if there were any chance a global warming skeptic would win. He’d make sure the judging panel consisted of fellow global warming believers before taking part. That is what first made me smell something fishy.
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Keep us posted.
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One national science fair is sponsored the Office of Educational Programs and hosted by Brookhaven National Laboratory. This link takes you to the 2010 winners: http://www.bnl.gov/education/contests/sciencefair/2010Results.asp. Ms. Castillo is not listed. As Bradley Fikes of the NCTimes dot com Blogs has already verified, Ms. Castillo is not listed as a winner of the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. A search of the National Science Foundation site turns up no references to Ms. Castillo; indeed, it does not appear that the National Science Foundation sponsors a science fair in which fourth graders could participate.
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One would expect a press release from the sponsoring organization. There doesn’t seem to be one.
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