“We tend to see science as this mystical beast living in the sky that, somehow, children see more clearly because they haven’t been clouded,” Onion says.

In tech you clearly see this. A lot of people believe that innovation can only come from people who are at max 30 years old because anyone with some years experience can't innovate anymore.

But if you look at great scientists/inventors, isn't it true that they are generally making their biggest discovery before the age of 30?

There is a selection bias - 'child prodigy discovers X' is a little more newsworthy than 'eccentric person discovers X after lifetime of mucking around'.

I expect that the average age is probably older than 30 [1]. But 35 year old scientists making discoveries about science doesn't make a very good story; neither does an entire field making slow steady progress. People like to have one genius to study.

Same as how history tends to remember heads of state, but all the actual work is often done by small, highly effective groups of people who nobody remembers (eg, parliaments - I can name a couple of European monarchs from the olden days, but nobody from the Dutch Republic or the East India Company leadership).

[1] http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/age-amp-science...

Isn't that the stereotype for mathematicians? Not so much about scientists and inventors, I think.

Newton and Einstein did their greatest work when pretty young. I am not sure about others.

What about Feynman or Leonardo Devinci?

Besides science and math build and progress slowly. Sometimes there's a new discovery and suddenly there's a whole explosion of progress. Think calculus or the even the computer. Which we're living in right now. But look at quantum mechanics and computing, that's been progressing for the last the century or so but it's progressing through continued and shared effort built upon previous generations work.

Plenty of mathematicians are older I'm sure. I know Wiles was 40ish when he proved Fermat's Last Theorem.

> Does anyone really see science or children that way?

If a rough estimate of the count of people like my Mom gives any indication: yes. Millions.

That being said, my mom is wonderful. But still a sucker for stuff like that. Little prayer sticker on the car windshield for the Patron Saint of Vehicle Safety to grant her safe travel.

Yes, I would say that I perceive exactly the phenomenon described in the article. People want to believe in a outsider like a genius kid or autistic savant who has a special insight which escapes those trapped within the standard point of view.

Not that people really 'believe' this logically... It's more like a tabloid-quality news story trope.

Children making amazing discoveries was a constant theme of early science fiction.

Moreover, if Richard Feynman's biographical essays even slightly typical, mid 20th century kids actually did do a fair amount of experimentation.

Remember machinery in the mid 20th was simpler but less reliable, so a kid with the latest gadget, whether radio, hot rod or model rocket, had considerable incentive to tinker. In fact, I suspect tinkering/hacking is main story for boys of that era and science was more of an offshoot.

It seem to me that people see not just science in a mystical way, but also coding and other similar activities.

Very much related to the culture around the various framework hype machines, the “changing the world” startup (corporate) trope, and more distantly, FOSS mythology.

There’s something very central about the trope of technology-as-toy-cupboard. It’s been a huge influence on the Internet and on Internet startups, not just in terms of how offices are accessorised and cultures are defined, but in the kinds of stories developers and business owners tell themselves about what they do and why they do it.

You get some very curious blends when it cross-feetilises with mainstream corporate capitalist class values.