Because people love lists (seriously, you should see the traffic we get for our annual "Top 10 Sexiest Mass Spectrometrists" story), Forbes last week put out its "30 Under 30" feature, a collection of the top players under 30 in various fields, including science and medicine.
You know what else people love? Jack Andraka. Andraka, who won the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his prototype protein biomarker-based pancreatic cancer diagnostic received more nominations than any other scientist for inclusion on the list, writes Forbes' Matthew Herper.
In fact, Andraka had such strong support that Herper felt compelled to write a follow up this week explaining why, in the end, he didn't make the cut. In short, the teen's diagnostic, which uses carbon nanotubes coated with antibodies to detect a protein linked to pancreatic cancer, might not be quite the game changer it was initially billed to be.
As Herper notes, Andraka has yet to publish on the device in a peer-reviewed journal, and it remains to be seen whether some of the more dramatic claims made for it will withstand such a level of scrutiny. Indeed, Andraka himself suggests as much, telling Herper in an email that "while promising, the project really was extremely preliminary and is by no means as sophisticated as some stories say it is."
Still, beats any science fair project we ever put together.