The John Maddox prize is a joint initiative of the charity Sense about Science and the leading international scientific journal Nature. The Prize has been awarded annually since 2012 to researchers who have shown great courage and integrity in standing up for science and scientific reasoning against fierce opposition and hostility. Each year there is one or two winners, and an additional prize for an early career researcher.
The prize brings into the spotlight the difficulty faced by many who fight to share the results of research evidence, and inspires and encourages people the world over to do the same. In 2019 there were over 200 nominations from 38 countries.
Nominations illustrate a wide variety of circumstances faced by researchers and communicators around the world, and judges consider these in the round. They also consider:
- The significance of an individual’s effort to advance the discussion of sound science in the public sphere.
- The nature of the challenge(s) faced by the individual, whether they persevered and whether those challenges were beyond what would be expected in their position.
- How well they placed the evidence in the wider debate and engaged others.
The John Maddox Prize awards evening is hosted at Wellcome Collection, London in November. Winners receive £3000 (winners in public office usually waive this).
Candidates for the John Maddox Prize must be nominated.
This is a global prize: people from any country and in any field can be nominated.
The winner is chosen by a judging panel, not by Sense about Science or Nature.
The 2021 judges are:
- Professor Lord Martin Rees – Astronomer Royal
- Ms Natasha Loder – Health Policy Editor, The economist
- Professor Sir Colin Blakemore – Yeung Kin Man Professor of Neuroscience and Senior Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study
- Ms Tracey Brown OBE – Director, Sense about Science
- Dr Magdalena Skipper – Editor-in-chief, Nature
- Professor Terrence Forrester – Chief Scientist & Managing Director, UWI Solutions for Developing Countries at the University of the West Indies
- Professor Dennis Lo – Director, Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences
- Ms Anin Luo (judge for the early career award) – Princeton University.
Application Deadline: June 4th 2021
