Don't underestimate our ability to miss the obvious. You're talking about the race that over 3000 or so years, forgot scurvy was cured by vitamin C over 10 times.

They also used to shape steel wire by pulling it really hard through a kinda steel funnel. This works because the tensile strength of steel is much higher than its yield strength, so you can pull on it with more force than it takes to shape it, without it snapping.

Back in the day, we figured out corrosion helped make the steel slippery when it went through the shaping tool. We though it was because some dudes pissed on the steel, so for a while after people pissed on their steel. Until people started figuring out beer worked just as well, and then half beer half water.

Until they finally realized water worked just as well to create corrosion. It took a couple hundred years.

Sometimes it just takes someone to think about it and do it. At 14 that's incredible, kids aren't that selfless at that age.

Whenever you read “person does something”, it’s usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.

Even if the active ingredients are already known, developing a new mode of application for an existing drug is an enormous accomplishment for a student his age. Plus, the alternative (minors doing experiments with unapproved drugs) is likely illegal, so there's only so much they could do.

When I was 14, I was not helping to cure cancer. My science fair project was about salt raising the boiling point of water. :) I'll give him props but you're right.

Whenever anyone does anything, that's usually the case...

remember when two highschool students solved a 4000 year old unsolved mathematical proof https://www.wfla.com/news/education/teens-prove-2000-year-old-pythagorean-theorem-school-officials-say/#:~:text=School%20officials%20say%2017%2Dyear,and%20without%20using%20circular%20logic.