UK primary school children publish in peer-reviewed journal

The research was undertaken at Blackawton School in Devon by pupils aged from eight to ten, who investigated the way that bumblebees see colours and patterns. The young scientists found evidence that bees are able to learn and remember cues based on colour and pattern in a spatially complex scene. The field of insect colour and pattern vision is generally poorly understood and the findings reported by the school children represent a genuine advance.

As with all papers accepted for publication in 'Biology Letters', the paper successfully went through peer review. The presentation of the paper is unconventional because the paper contains no references due to the inaccessibility of the existing scientific literature to 8-10 year olds. However, it has been published alongside a commentary by Laurence T. Maloney of New York University's Center for Neural Science and Natalie Hempel de Ibarra of Exeter University's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.

In their commentary, which is fully referenced and provides background to the research, Hempel and Maloney write: "The experiments are modest in scope but cleverly and correctly designed and carried out with proper controls to avoid possible artefacts. They lack statistical analyses and any discussion of previous experimental work, but they hold their own among experiments carried out by highly trained specialists. The experimenters have asked a scientific question and answered it well."

The project was coordinated by Beau Lotto, a neuroscientist based at UCL's Institute of Ophthalmology and Head of Lottolab Studio, an innovative research space that creates installations, musical performances and educational programmes, and performs carefully controlled experiments on perception and behaviour. Dr Lotto is currently developing a 'living lab' at London's Science Museum, with support from the Wellcome Trust, which enables the public to participate, design and run real science experiments on site.

Dr Lotto said: "The publication of a scientific paper entirely conceived and written by schoolchildren shows what's possible if we celebrate uncertainty. Real scientific work is full of uncertainty - that's why it's so exciting - but I find that this is what's lacking in education, where subjects are too often presented as a series of dull factual certainties. The publication of this work is an important step in showing what we can achieve if we're prepared to approach science in a way that's creative, daring and, above all, fun."

Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities & Engagement at the Wellcome Trust, commented: "Science is about asking questions and the publication of this research paper is evidence that it is not limited by the age of the questioner. We are proud to be actively supporting the further development of this unique project and we hope that the study will serve as inspiration to curious children everywhere."

'Biology Letters' is published by the Royal Society. Editor Professor Brian Charlesworth FRS said: "This paper represents a world first in high-quality scientific publishing and I'm proud that 'Biology Letters' is supporting this highly innovative approach to science education. This is a unique way of encouraging children's engagement with science by getting a group to write about their work in a publishable format. I hope that it will inspire other groups to realise that science is not an exclusive club but something that's available for everybody."

"I'm delighted that this work is going to be published in 'Biology Letters'," said Dave Strudwick, Head of Blackawton School. "Our pupils devised, conducted and wrote up an experiment which resulted in genuinely novel findings, so they deserve to be published. But even more importantly, they had the chance to work with an actual scientist and become one themselves - not just watching the scientist at work but actually participating in and creating the whole scientific process. Science shouldn't be seen as something that is detached from the real world - it's just a certain way of looking at things. This project represents a completely different way of working and learning that I hope will be taken up by other schools and in other subjects."