4 Aug 1998, The Daily Telegraph

Articles with a lot more bite

Science Editor Roger Highfield introduces the winners of The Daily Telegraph BASF Young Science Writers competition.

LOVELORN voles, macho micro-organisms and kinky oyster catchers were some of the characters that featured in entries to the most prestigious science writing competition for young people, the winners of which are announced today.

This year saw a number of milestones in the competition. There have been some 40 over-all winners, 200 runners-up and 5,000 entries in the decade since the competition began.

This year the effort was backed by a new sponsor, the chemical company BASF, rep-resented at the final round of judging by its North Europe president, Barry Stickings. And, unusually, it saw an all male list of winners.

The judges who have sifted through hundreds of entries over the years felt there had been an overall improvement, with more evidence of journalistic nous and snappy writing.

The high priest of the public understanding of science, Prof Lewis Wolpert, said the competition dispels the idea that young scientists can't write. ''Taken as a group, the standard was very high.''

This year there was ''a real sense people were finding their own subjects rather than following the media,'' added Dr David Concar, deputy editor of 'New Scientist'.

That does not mean there is little room for improvement. The British Association's Dr Peter Briggs felt that some entries ''mimicked what journalism is about rather than communicating science''.

He bemoaned the lack of entries representing the harder disciplines, such as chemistry. This was echoed by Prof Heinz Wolff, who complained about the ''hideous over emphasis on biology''.

Dr Mary Archer felt that there were many interesting ideas but some failed to make a key logical link when developing them: ''You have to make that connection in science.''

There was a general feeling that young entrants were better than older ones. ''The older group tended to write for a scientific journal,'' added Barry Stickings. ''Younger ones were writing for newspapers.'' As Dr Concar put it, ''Something about reading science at university reduces your ability to write entertainingly.''

The most worrying problem is plagiarism. With the rise of the Internet, it is now trivial to download a press release and pad it out into a feature.

The process of judging is iterative. Each judge nominates a shortlist. Then the entire list of finalists is re-examined to double check for also rans worth listing. As ever, I launched the judging with my selection for the best of the crop. As ever, my choice was greeted with a roll of the eyes and a mutter from Prof Wolpert: ''One of the lowest marks that I gave.''

Finally, after several hours, the judges settle on the winners. The mixture of gentle manly debate and good humour saved the day. As Dr Laura Garwin of 'Nature' remarked, ''Once again we avoided coming to blows.''