Lead role

In October 2017 an 11-year-old from Colorado beat nine other finalists to be named America’s top young scientist, and collected $25,000.^{3NPRTroubled by Flint water crisis, 11-year-old girl invents lead-detecting device20 Oct 2017} Her entry, a lead detector called Tethys, was built from carbon nanotubes, an Arduino-based signal processor and a Bluetooth link to a smartphone.^{4Digital Trends11-year-old invents Tethys, a device that detects lead in drinking water18 Oct 2017} Three years later TIME named her, at 15, its first Kid of the Year, chosen from more than 5,000 nominees.^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020,2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} Gitanjali Rao has become the standard exhibit in the case for the teenage inventor. We think the exhibit is real but is usually labelled wrongly.

The label reads “prodigy”. The evidence points elsewhere. Tethys was not an act of private genius in a garage. The competition paired Ms Rao with Kathleen Shafer, a research scientist at 3M who develops new plastics technologies.^{4Digital Trends11-year-old invents Tethys, a device that detects lead in drinking water18 Oct 2017} By her own account she had begun research on carbon nanotube sensors in a Denver Water quality lab around the age of 10.^{2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} The Flint water crisis supplied the motive.^{2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020,3NPRTroubled by Flint water crisis, 11-year-old girl invents lead-detecting device20 Oct 2017} Adults supplied the bench, the instruments and the supervision. That is not a criticism. It is the recipe, and it is worth stating, because the story is usually told without it.

What she contributed is harder to fake. Ms Rao describes her process as “Observe, brainstorm, research, build and communicate.”^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020} It is a plain method, and it explains her choice of problem. Tethys sent a reading of whether drinking water contained lead to a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, using a disposable cartridge in a mostly reusable device, at a kit price she estimated at $20 or less.^{4Digital Trends11-year-old invents Tethys, a device that detects lead in drinking water18 Oct 2017} A cheap, legible answer to a worry that families in Flint had been asked to take on trust is the sort of product framing many adult start-ups reach only after a pivot or two.

The method then travelled. Her later projects lie in unrelated fields. Epione is a device aimed at detecting prescription opioid addiction at an early stage.^{2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} Kindly is an artificial-intelligence app and browser extension against cyberbullying: a teenager types a word or phrase, the software flags whether it is bullying, and the user chooses whether to edit the message or send it anyway.^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020,2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} “The goal is not to punish,” she told TIME of Kindly.^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020} A nudge rather than a ban is a considered design choice, not a teenager’s whim. A filter that blocks messages invites its users to find a way round it. One that asks them to think again at least does not start an arms race.

The sceptic’s case deserves its hearing. Claims about what these devices can do come largely from the inventor and the press, not from peer-reviewed validation, and the coverage we have seen reports no accuracy figures for Kindly or Epione.^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020,2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} A prototype is a prototype. A lead sensor that works on a competition table has some distance to travel before anyone should trust it over a laboratory test. The attention a 15-year-old attracts is also rather out of proportion to the evidence on what her devices do, and that is not her doing.

Yet the sceptic aims at the wrong target. The most durable thing Ms Rao has built may not be a gadget. She has partnered with rural schools, museums and STEM organisations to run innovation workshops for thousands of students.^{2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} The pitch is as plain as the process: “science is cool, innovating is cool, and anybody can be an innovator.”^{2AP, via NBC NewsStudent scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao is TIME magazine's first Kid of the Year5 Dec 2020} Her own version is blunter: if she can do it, she told TIME, anybody can.^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020} That is a claim about method, and it is testable. Give a competent child a real problem, an expert mentor and permission to fail, and see what comes out.

The uncomfortable corollary is for the grown-ups. If the ingredients were a problem, a mentor and a lab, the scarce item is not talent. It is the mentor and the lab, and these are rationed by postcode far more than by ability. Ms Rao herself says she does not “look like your typical scientist.”^{1TIMEKid of the Year 2020: Gitanjali Rao3 Dec 2020} A system that gets a single such inventor onto the cover of a magazine is not short of children who could do the work. It is short of Shafers.

Praise her by all means. Then ask who is meant to supply the other mentors.