Aug 2000, The Daily Telegraph

Talented two survive the acid test

Judges use every trick to swing the vote in The Daily Telegraph BASF Young Science Writer Awards.

Roger Highfield reports.

TAKE nine eminent people. Hand them the best entries to the nation's most prestigious science writing competition. Fuel them with food, wine and plenty of coffee. Then sit back and let the bickering begin.

This year, The Daily Telegraph BASF young science writer competition received one of its biggest entries to date, covering a range of styles and subjects - from a first-person account by the first GM human, to an essay on abattoir design.

They were judged by a diverse bunch of scientists, journalists and practitioners of PUS (public understanding of science) who gathered at the Telegraph's offices in Canary Wharf, marking the culmination of a long selection process that was destined to end only one way: in argument.

Long before the judges met, the mad, bad and boring entries had been rejected along, alas, with a number of good quality entries that only just failed to make the grade. The survivors were divided among pairs of judges, who voted for their favourites while taking account of factors such as age, style, the difficulty of the subject and how much it had been marred by poor grammar and impenetrable jargon.

Then a final shortlist was drawn up for the judging at Canary Wharf. Game theorists, anthropologists and psychologists would find what followed a rich subject of study.

The panel first stated the best and worst of the bunch, then shifted their alliances as the others pitched in. Evidence that the judges have a profound influence on each other is not hard to find: neither of the entries to the older and younger categories that received the most votes in the first round of voting went on to win.

There were good-natured disputes over whether a piece on skin cancer beat another on manufacturing crisps; there was unease over whether an entry to a science writing competition should dwell on an alternative therapy that is poorly understood; and there were debates over whether efforts to personalise science - which we favour - should include a wild polemic.

Each judge had something to offer. Each deployed various strategies. And each saw one of his/her favourites dumped by the others. No one was entirely satisfied with the outcome, which is the price that has to be paid with a panel of this size dealing with an entry of this diversity.

This year the effort was again backed by the major chemical company BASF, which was represented at the final judging by its managing director, Barry Stickings. To give his vote more weight, he reminded us that he had shown the entries to Grace and Ali, his wife and daughter: "My 19-year-old thought..." and so on.

Feel free to reject their advice, he said. But remember that they "are just ordinary Telegraph readers". This certainly swayed his colleagues in one of the categories, though it was not enough to help shortlisted entries on chemistry that he backed, a crucial-but-hard-to-popularise field that Barry believes deserves a higher profile.

Another champion of the physical sciences and engineering is Prof Heinz Wolff. He stressed that articles need to be fun and did his best to get into the mind of the Telegraph reader, a line also taken by fellow scrutineer Dr Peter Briggs of the British Association, which has backed the competition since it was launched in the mid 1980s.

The guru of the public understanding of science, Prof Lewis Wolpert, devised a simple memory test to select his favourites: "I read them a few days ago and then listed the ones I remembered and wanted to tell people about."

He also waged psychological warfare on his fellow judges to influence their decisions: this consisted of groans and sniffs as his colleagues listed their favourites; less subtle, he boasted to fellow judge, Dr Mary Archer, that he "shouted louder" during the bouts of verbal fisticuffs.

WHILE Lewis took direct action, 'Nature''s Laura Garwin was the master of tactical voting, watching carefully who had voted for what and then wielding her influence to ensure that every entry was considered.

The BBC's Glenwyn Benson came armed with information from "ideas labs", in which young people were brainstormed by the BBC for inspirational scientific ideas, such as the evolution of human nature, and sought entries that chimed with current research interests.

Dr Archer rested on her "own baggage" a distinguished career in chemistry, a field wedged between messy biology and over-reductionist physics that offers a good vantage point to judge whether a topic has been explained properly. She seemed to be more on top of the judging than the hapless chairman (me), creating the illusion of complete control by being the only judge not to be surrounded by a sea of paper.

Jerry Webb looked for well structured, original articles with a beginning, middle and conclusion. As the editor of 'New Scientist', a much-quoted source by the entries, his advice proved invaluable for detecting evidence of plagiarism, a constant worry given how many people download information from the web for their articles.

The overall winners are shown here. Those pushed into second place will be published in weeks to come. The runners-up and those who did not make it to the lists shown here should take heart: the panel agreed that it was one of the hardest competitions to judge since it was launched, given the big entry.