30 July 2003, The Daily Telegraph

'Entertaining read' impress the judges in the Daily Telegraph/BASF Science Writer Awards.

Roger Highfield report

How Clare stretched ahead

Monkey medicine, "bugs from hell", whether the design of our brains makes us religious and why women have breasts were just a few of the topics tackled by the latest entries to the nation's most prestigious science writing competition.

The quest to find promising young writers was launched in December by the author Fay Weldon, who said that science popularisers help defend us from "an alarming, almost religious retreat into irrationality". Printed here are the two winning entries to the competition, now in its 16th year thanks to the sponsorship of the chemical company BASF, represented at the judging by its chairman, Barry Stickings.

Like his fellow judges, Mr Stickings was impressed with the overall standard and emphasised how the competitions aim-to showcase the inspirational side of science - is more crucial than ever, given the impact of science and technology on society.

The good news is that the number of entries increased this year by more than five per cent. Even better, as Adam Hart-Davis pointed out, the finalists were all entertaining and worth reading. "I am very impressed." But many judges were concerned by the rise in sloppy grammar and the decline in the number and clarity of entries in the more difficult fields, such as maths, engineering, physics and, in particular, chemistry. "As chairman of the UK Chemistry Leadership Council that worries me a lot," said Mr Stickings.

Even on New Scientist, where several journalists have chemistry backgrounds, "they all try to write about something else", said the editor, Jeremy Webb. And as soon as chemists do something important, it is rebranded as another discipline, whether molecular biology or nanotechnology.

Judging: Around 130 of this year's batch of 437 entries made it to the first stage, when they were divided into batches. Pairs of judges voted for their favourites in each batch, while taking account of style, novelty, the difficulty in popularising the subject, and whether the entry had been marred by poor grammar, overstated ideas, muddled metaphors and impenetrable jargon. Above all else, which entries were good enough to appear on this page?

After this, we still had more than 20 left in each category, more than in previous years. These survivors were then judged in a final session at Canary Wharf by a panel that had been joined by one new member: Dr Roland Jackson, chief executive of the British Association, which backs the competition.

Alas, however, the panel lost one unofficial judge: Barry Sticking's daughter Ali, who had helped him read entries in earlier years, had left the science writers and university physics behind to begin work with a horse trainer.

As ever, Jeremy ebb of New Scientist helped weed out entries which leant too heavily on his magazine for their research. As in previous years, judging was marked by wrangling over whether a gushing" science lite" entry on furry creatures rates higher than a diligent-but-worthy dig into a mathematical field;debates over whether style is more important than content; and squabbles on arcane issues: the life of the epaulette shark; how to steady tall buildings; Day-Glo parrots and whether blind people really have visual dreams.

The discussions were far from straightforward. "I liked it," Prof Lewis Wolpert said. "You are alone, "replied Adam Hart-Davis. Despite the no-holds banter (Mr Webb complained"you rotten lot" as his peers ganged up to reject one entry), there was no streaked mascara or flouncing out in a huff.

Younger Category (15-19): One problem that often dogged the best young entries was identified by Dr Jackson: a lack of sources and references meant that we were not always sure where they got their facts from and whether they had interviewed anyone to bring their piece up to date.

Another common problem was the failure to grasp the basic difference between an essay and a newspaper article.

In the first round, three entries picked up the most support: Catherine Griffiths, who used science to justify why teenagers like to stay in bed in the mornings; Elizabeth Newton, on the fungus farms run by ants;and Lewis Brindley, a previous winner, who would come second this time around for his novel take on asthma (though Mary Archer was surprised that the hero of his tale took so long to link his huge pet iguana with his allergy. ) However, after Mr ebb drew attention to the charms of Clare Neve, the panel gradually came around to his view. She was driven to find out the science of stretching by her own love of athletics. "Compared with her entry, everything else was a little bit derivative," he said.

"Very interesting stuff," chipped in Mr Hart-Davis. "I am very keen on it," added Prof Wolpert. "As someone who strains himself perpetually, it is not only interesting but important. "Mary Archer was inspired by the article to debate stretching and flexibility with Heinz Wolff. "Nice that an athlete should wonder about why she does what she does," she said. .

Older Category (20-28): The judging of the older category was much more straightforward. After the first round of voting, a clear winner emerged: Claire Bithell of Manchester University. Her piece could have turned the reader off, by launching straight into an account of sleeping sickness, but instead had an intriguing hook - the lethargy of Sultan Djata - which made you want to read on. For second place, strong contenders were Kris Kirby, who provided a gripping read about ants, and Claire Tilstone, who described how the epaulette shark's ability to do with little oxygen is inspiring heart and stroke research. They were eventually elbowed out of the way by William McDowall of Leeds University who reminded us, with "Daniel's Defiance" runner bean, that the worries about the decline in biodiversity stretch far beyond coral reefs and rainforests to muddy allotments in Britain. "Can he tell us where we can get these beans?" said Mr Hart-Davis.

The prizes: the British Association will invite the top four to its annual meeting in early September at the University of Salford. The overall winners will also attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting next February in Seattle, and each receive £500. Those pushed into second place will receive £250 and will be published in weeks to come. Runners-up also win subscriptions to Nature and New Scientist, and each receive £100. Once again, The Daily Telegraph, BASF and the British Association would like to thank the many hundreds of people who submitted entries.