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Science really is child’s play

Kids have a natural fascination about the world around them, but it isn’t often this curiosity gets channelled into peer-reviewed scientific papers.

A group of 8- to 10-year-olds from Blackawton School in Devon are doing their best to change that. Their findings, published today in the peer-reviewed Royal Society journal , offer modest new insight into how the Buff-tailed Bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris) perceives the world. And, though their research is written up in “kids speak” and lacks the traditional accoutrement of references to previous research or historical context, their champions and reviewers alike insist that it is sound science. Beau Lotto, a neuroscientist at University College London’s Institute of Opthalmology and one of the two adult co-authors (the other is Dave Strudwick, head teacher at the kids’ school), says simply: “The paper wasn’t published just because it was kids.”

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