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Science 14 April 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5771, p. 171
DOI: 10.1126/science.312.5771.171d
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Figure 1
Aubrey de Grey

A scientific competition between Jason Pontin, editor in chief of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Technology Review, and biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University in the U.K. is heating up with the announcement last month of the panel of judges.

Pontin is challenging de Grey's prescription for extending the useful human life span by hundreds of years by treating aging as an engineering problem susceptible to damage control. Pontin calls the theory, known as SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), "outrageous and unverifiable." Frustrated by scientists' reluctance to criticize it in public, he proposed a contest last July. The $20,000 prize will go to the submission that best demonstrates SENS "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate," says Pontin. Entries can be sent to Jason.pontin{at}technologyreview.com. The five-person panel includes Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's artificial intelligence lab, and genome sequencer J. Craig Venter. The winner will be announced at www.technologyreview.com on 11 July. The original prize fund of $10,000 donated by the magazine doubled when The Methuselah Foundation, de Grey's organization, tossed in an additional $10,000.

CREDIT: POPPY BERRY




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)