The John Maddox prize is a collaboration between the charity Sense of Science and Nature, the world's leading research journal. Since 2012, the prize has been given annually to researchers who have shown great bravery and honesty in defending science and scientific reasoning in the face of vehement opposition and hostility. Each year, one or two winners are chosen, as well as an award for a young researcher.

The award highlights the challenges that many people face in sharing research findings, and it inspires and encourages people all over the world to do the same. There were more than 200 nominations from 38 countries in 2019.

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

CLICK HERE TO APPLY