Congratulations to Shadab Rasool, But We Have A Few Questions, Please
These days, any news from Pakistan almost invariably involves body counts. In the current atmosphere of despair even the
tiniest of good news from that godforsaken country is celebrated and cherished. With that appetite for positive news from
Pakistan, the report of a Pakistani high-schooler from Khairpur, Shadab Rasool,
winning a silver medal in a science fair in New York, was received with
pride. As always, the Pakistani media
had some terrible reporting of the news and it was hard to tell what new
technology was invented by Shadab Rasool.
The best piece—with some explanation of Rasool’s technology—was written
by Mithal Khuhro and Sameer Mandhoro, for the Express Tribune.
But even Khuhro and Mandhoro’s report relied too much on the information
obtained from Shadab Rasool himself. So
we decided to do our own investigative journalism and get to further details. As it normally happens the investigation did
provide more details, but it also generated a few questions. Here are the questions and we hope someone would
be able to answer them for everyone’s benefit.
Is Shadab Rasool also known as Usama Khan?
[We find Usama Khan’s name announced here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXXaTMENJew--at 00:36,
at the Genius Olympiad award ceremony.]
Also, at http://www.geniusolympiad.org/images/stories/GENIUS2012/GENIUS%202012%20Finalist%20List.pdf,
which is a list of the finalist teams (248 out of 657 participating teams),
Team 609, for the project title ‘Get the
pollutants out: Removal of harmful pollutants from industrial waste water by
tea waste,’ lists Usama Khan and K. Baloch as the team members. [A second team from Pakistan, Team 174,
for the project title ‘Detoxification of heavy metal contaminated soils by using
a new phytoremediation method’, had Abdul Daim and Wajid Waheed as the two team
members. That team won the ‘Honorable
Mention’ award. See that team at 14:00,
in the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFr1B6y721I]
In this TV report,
the reporter claims the ‘US
Government’ has given a scholarship of $250,000 to Shadab Rasool. First, Genius Olympiad, is organized by the
State University of New York at Oswego and the Terra Science and Education
Foundation, and NOT by the ‘US Government.’ Secondly, it does not appear any cash award
is given in this high school project competition. http://www.geniusolympiad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=17
[In fact, contestants have to bear
their own travel expenses, to reach to the contest in New York.]
And lastly, we would like to
review Shadab Rasool’s project in further detail to understand the originality of
his technology. [The Internet seems to
be dripping with ‘tea waste’ technologies invented to fight industrial
pollution. For example, see this 2010 paper
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