| I don't think it's a fabrication. The girls won a prize for overcoming adversity, and they arguably built a better robot than teams that didn't have much adversity to overcome. That's not nothing. But at the same time articles like this one leave me with a feeling of pandering and head-patting. We all like to see groups of underdogs do impressive things. If the article were about what an outlier their robot is because it's so good, or what an outlier the team is because they pulled off a feat of engineering against all odds, then I'd be cheering along with everyone else. But mainly the article is: "these girls faced far more adversity than most anyone else, but still managed to perform adequately." That's something for them to be proud of personally, and for Afghanistan to be proud of nationally. At the same time, if the competition were adjudicated in a double-blind way, would they have still beat out other teams? There's nothing wrong in discussing whether that's a relevant question. On another note, I'm surprised I got downvoted when adding background information to the discussion. |