When I was in fourth grade, I designed a bizarre, painful, and deeply flawed experiment for the school science fair. My goal was to test the relative effectiveness of garlic and bug spray for repelling mosquitoes. I sacrificed myself for science and covered one-third of my arm in garlic, one-third in bug spray, and one-third in nothing, then stood outside next to the swampy forest at dusk to tally the bug bites. Even with fake arms hanging off of my project board, dotted with permanent marker “mosquito bites,” I still only took home an honorable mention. Read more