EDIT 3: ISEF removed him from the winner's page and are revoking the 50k! Will they make any changes for next year? No one knows!

EDIT 2: His lab at USC has removed him from the lab members page

EDIT: Nice job r-slurs, you made him take his Linkedin account down.

This is starting to be picked up by the small chuddie internet personalities, so get in while it's still hot! Here's the summary. Very long so buckle up kids :

• Regeneron ISEF is this big science fair for high school nerds that's been around since the 1950s. It's considered the most prestigious science fair for high schoolers and 80+ countries participate. Winners usually get an all-expense paid trip & stay & activities (like a Universal Studios day etc) at the location which rotates every year (this year was in California). Not only is it but there's money involved! The top winner gets $75k (life changing money for poor countries like UK) and the 2 runner ups get 50k. Plus lots of special awards, prizes, etc. And the top winners are basically guaranteed to get into Harvard/MIT/Stanford.

• To get to ISEF in the US, you have to win your local state fair and get nominated to ISEF, so its pretty selective. You undergo several rounds of judging locally and then a day of judging at the ISEF itself. Judges are supposed to at minimum have a PhD or 6 years of experience in whatever category they are judging.

ruh-roh

• This year the 50k winner is this 17 yr old kid who did his project on "machine-learning research to identify microbial genetic sequences that can be modified to biodegrade plastic." Besides saving the world, he is apparently a neuroscience research fellow at USC. His dad is a wealthy Silicon Valley VC dude from India, and his older sister goes to USC studying quantitative bio

• Note that his category is "Environmental Engineering" and the competition was hosted in California this year.

• A few days after winning, a mysterious, anonymous document began to circulate in the ISEF community claiming Pai fabricated most of his project. The letter asks ISEF to investigate & fix their system for the future. Even I got sent this document from a friend, despite being a winner like 15 years ago. The document is 36 pages long and very detailed. It's worth skimming through because of how hilarious & obvious this fraud was: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e4vjzp6JgClCFXkbNOweXZnoRnGWcM6vHeglDH1DmGM/edit It regularly has 50-100 people looking at it at all times of the day.

  

• • TLDR: very obvious and extensive fraud. Kid took images of research done, mirrored them and claimed them as his own. Said he invented a rasberry pi based device and had pics of it, was invented by someone else 3 years ago and this kid just used those pics (didn't even re-make the device!). All his data is extremely sketch, some results are straight up impossible, & numbers pulled out of butt. On top of the fraud, the kid is a complete dumbass. Spelling errors everywhere, he doesn't understand basic concepts of ML/AI, and he stole half his project from the ISEF winner 3 years ago. No idea how ISEF let this through...

• At some point, a few reddit posts were made, the biggest one on /r/ApplyingToCollege. Ofc, the kid got absolutely blasted in the comments as the evidence is pretty much darning. Many parents chimed in saying they were pissed (understandably) bc their little einstein worked so hard and got fricked. Being Reddit, it is likely that this is when the Open Letter started getting sent to internet personalities, schools' admissions offices, Society4Science, the kid's school in California, etc

Reddit link (note 50% deleted, we'll get to that in a bit):

Archive (couldn't find one that had the original post, if you find it, let me know and I'll update): https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/

• A few hours after the original reddit post, a post from a "friend" of the ISEF kid was also posted in /r/A2C. It's honestly too hilarious to summarize appropriately. Let's just say, this "friend" sounds a lot like a mad sexy Indian dude parent

Deleted post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/?sort=controversial

Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240520162210/https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/?rdt=50206

Notice the spelling errors, probably just a coincidence that our accused finalist also made several spelling errors in his $55k winning project

• Of course, a popular post should NEVER be allowed to stay up so our A2C jannies got straight to work and deleted the original post as well as this one, banned several accounts, deleted comments, etc. Oh you expected the jannies to explain why they deleted it? you're not entitled to other people's labor, chud: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/?sort=controversial

• On the sidelines, lots of drama is happening in various Groomercords associated w/ college admissions & ISEF. As I am not a , I have not joined them and don't know the details. But I have heard from my younger siblings' friends that a bunch of kids from Pai's school (CCA a bougie San Diego school with enough resources to literally have a lab at their school) "raided" a server (aka spammed the shit out of it) making fun of the kid/enjoyed being the center of attention.

• Other Reddit posts on smaller subs are also gaining traction: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1cwpfcg/biggest_high_school_science_fair_had_academic/?sort=controversial

  

• Now if this was just a Reddit story, eh whatever. But never underestimate the ability of a to find random stories that fit their narrative https://www.karlstack.com/p/exclusive-scandal-at-americas-top

• On top of this reporting, it began blowing up on Twitter (blowing up being relative to how much a children's science fair can be expected to blow up). Several huge accounts (100k+ followers) chimed in and Twitter commenters began showing off their r-slurredness as usual and creating some tasty drama.

(see screenshots in comment)

• The lab the kid worked at had originally made a post celebrating, but started getting mean comments and have since deleted it. https://twitter.com/WallySeldom/status/1792656953421992082

• Don't forget: ISEF is a global competition. So our BING CHILLING friends also started talking about it.

https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/znjy/6853039.html

https://huaren.us/showtopic.html?topicid=3018297

(See comments for screenshots)

• So, what has Society For Science and Regeneron ISEF done now that everyone knows & this is getting public attention? Disabled their YouTube comments of course!

• Ok, just kidding, they also apparently sent out an email to all Fair Directors (people who run the local fairs) saying they are "investigating" idk, from looking at the Open Letter document, seems like some kids did all the investigating for you dumbasses. And this isn't soft plagiarism/exaggerating, this is the kind of shit that gets your paper retracted as a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute tenured professor, so not sure what's left to investigate.

• What happens next? You decide! Some are worried that this kid might kill himself (seems unlikely given that he still has his socials up, posted about it on Linkedin, his family members and him are full denying that he cheated, etc). Some say frick dem kids and want him/his parents to go to jail. It seems the only way this can escalate further is if it makes it into the national news (any chuds want to send an anonymous tip to InfoWars ). I'll conclude with a quote from the kid himself, as these were his candid thoughts after winning $55k for a fraudulent project. You may think that he would be thankful, excited to see how his research will be implemented, wants to keep working on plastic waste research- you'd be wrong!

I'm looking forward to my future and how this ISEF award can really help me out

Wow, regardless of what happens, I too am excited to see this kid's future: he clearly has already mastered the art of research in 2024 and is well on his way to academia! Best of luck little

Also I have more screenshots but I hit the upload limit. Fricking

I'll make this an effort post since I know you zoomies know nothing about the Internet or gaming before 2015.

Dyack in the middle

Silicon Knights

Silicon Knights was a Canadian developer who made a few decent games, like Legacy of Kain and the Gamecube remake of Metal Gear Solid. They're mainly remembered for the classic Gamecube horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which is quite good for its time and is notable for being the only rated-M game ever published directly by Nintendo. They were lead by a guy named Dennis Dyack, a whiny manchild who doomed his company to fail.

Zoomers: This was considered scary in 2002

To give you an idea of their management, here's an image of games in production, games that were cancelled or abandoned before release are marked in yellow. Note the staggering ratio of unreleased/released games:

Anyways, Dyack's passion project for decades had always been a game called Too Human, but every effort to make it had been abortive. After the successes of Eternal Darkness and MGS, Dyack decides the Wii doesn't have shiny enough graphics and makes the bold choice to unshackle his company from a lucrative position as a Nintendo third party so he can truly fulfill his vision on the superior XBawx Please Fix Me. Silicon Knights shacks up with Microsoft and Epic Games and produce an E3 demo (zoomers: people used to go to an annual convention for video game trailers) which is received overwhelmingly negatively.

Dyack is NOT HAPPY and goes on the IGN forums to whine about how the critics will regret their words and deeds:

Unedited clip from Too Human

NeoGAF

Once upon a time there was a gayming website called Gaming Age, with their forum called the Gaming Age Forum (or GAF). Eventually Gaming Age imploded, but the top two jannies (Evillore and Bishoptl) were able to move their community to a new forum, appropriately called NeoGAF. You wouldn't know it these days with GAF being a shambling corpse and its spinoff ResetERA being what it is, but pre-G*merGate GAF was chill and a place where industry figures would show up and sperg out while everyone laughed at them.

Dennis Dyack makes a bet

Once such figure was our hero, Dyack. With his new slop getting trashed by GAFfers, he makes a thread to bet on how it'll turn out:

Right now the man just appears confident in his project. But his next post is a bit more... unhinged, and seems to be setting the bar rather low by making alreay-forgotten games Lair and Haze the standard to beat:

He then goes for an interview on 1up (Zoomers: Now-defunct gaming journo site) and whined about how people saying mean things online is ruining America and how if the NeoGAF mods don't start respecting Denis Dyack and Too Human he's going to call the Internet Police and shut them down!

Dyack then does another interview where he declares that not only is NeoGAF the worst forum in the world, but forums in general are evil and this is why the US military no longer uses writing:

Too Human comes out and scores lower than Haze. In classic GAF fashion the top janny punishes Dyack for losing the bet by writing lots of words and then perma-banning him. Dyack copes by saying g*mers are too stupid to understand his genius.

By this point the capital-G G*mers are pissed at Dyack in a way that prefigures G*merGate in a way. Seething articles are written speculating that angering the G*mers has resulted in him not just being banned from NeoGAF, but divorced from his wife, kicked out of the house, abandoned by his employees, his car towed, banned from every website ever, banned from the city of Niagara and tossed over the waterfall.

He messed with g*mers. G*mers.

The Saga Ends

Denis Dyack has brought Silicon Knights from one of the more respected devs in the industry to basically a joke. Following the failure of Too Human Dyack blamed the Unreal Engine and Epic Games and made the genius decision to sue them. This didn't go their way and by 2012 they owed Epic millions of dollars, had less than five employees, and were legally obligated to destroy all of their unsold games and source code.

In the meantime they had six more projects (including two sequels for Too Human) which were cancelled before they finally released another game, the absolutely awful X-Men Destiny, which turns out to be their last. In desperation, Dyack crawls back to Nintendo and pitches a sequel to their last hit, Eternal Darkness. NeoGAF insider reveals that Nintendo is agreeable until SK loses the lawsuit against Epic, and they decide they'd rather not fork over $10 million in legal fees so SK can survive, which Dyack denied. Former SK staff reveal that this was the case and part of the reason the X-Men game sucked was because Dyack was taking money given by Activision for that game and instead putting it toward Eternal Darkness II.

Years later Dyack attempts to kickstart his own Eternal Darkness successor and makes $300,000 out of the $700,000 target. He has yet to make another game. The end!

Dyack, left

tl;dr