I wondered the same thing about the third place contestant. The write-up said she measured the carcinogens in grilled chicken using a high pressure liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer. When I was in college, they would only let us use the analytic equipment in planned labs under supervised conditions. I can only imagine the response if I went to the lab manager and asked if I could put a piece of chicken in his spectrometer.

Perhaps they just have some special arrangements for people entering (big) contests.

"Her research was supervised by Dr. Alakananda Basu at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. "

This is the problem I have with science fairs as "competitions". It is completely impossible to disentangle the contributions of the student from the opportunities given by their environment, so if you just judge the end result, of course the kids who happen to have access to university labs are going to get results that are miles beyond what a kid working in his parents' garage can accomplish. But that has, IMHO, very little to do with the individual. (Not to mention that kids whose parents are university faculty or similar, and thus generally pretty well off in society, will disproportionately get these chances.)

I stopped volunteering as a judge for the Santa Cruz science fair because I got so fed up with this bias.

I dont know if she was in the same situation, but I went to a Math/Science Magnet High School and we were required to conduct a research project at the local university with a professor as an advisor. My school had relationships with many professors that were willing to mentor us.

Basically, each day we would leave school a couple hours early and head to the university lab where we would work. The projects were often a part of or a very small version of projects that the lab was already involved in. So at the end of our research we got to talk about the super amazing project we had worked on and generally looked like amazing geniuses, when in fact we were more or less tagging along and doing some semi-advanced lab tech work.

She worked under a professor at a nearby University.

So, this work was either given to her, or she worked her *ss off to get there.

Or she asked politely. I find that the younger you are the easier it is to get things.

When I was in high school I wanted to get into video games badly. I found someone at the local EA office, got to meet him, got introduced around, and even got his mentorship on a few projects. All of this, I think, based on the notion that I'm a smart-lookin' 16 year-old student.

Try getting that with just a phone call when you're out of school and in your 20s and 30s.