Apparently Technology Review's debate on the merits of Aubrey de Grey's ideas (or his 'science', if you wish) is set to heat up again. Last year, after publishing a critical profile of de Grey in the magazine and taking much heat for it, they sought to back it up with more authority by soliciting a response from a working biogerontologist. Recall that de Grey is the guy with the ambitious program to cure all diseases, including aging (if you call it a disease, which he basically does), so that eventually people will live forever. Only it turned out the real scientists were too busy to respond (or they don't have a response), so the next step was to offer a reward ($20K), which is where we're at now. From their web site:
In July 2005, Technology Review announced a prize for any molecular biologist working in the field of aging who could successfully meet the following challenge: demonstrate that SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), Aubrey de Grey's prescription for defeating aging, is so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate. We pledged to pay $10,000 to the authors of a winning submission. Not to be upstaged, The Methuselah Foundation, an organization founded by de Grey and devoted to promoting anti-aging science, pledged an additional $10,000 to anyone who meets the requirements of the challenge.
We also pledged to form an independent panel to judge the submissions, and there we had some difficulty. The prize has languished, not for a shortage of submissions, but because we wanted to assemble a suitably distinguished group of judges.
The criteria of "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate" seems a bit stricter than the original phrasing. There are cases where results or methods are wrong, yet still worthy of debate, I think... but I'm probably parsing that wrong. The article goes on to list judges. Presumably there will be more about the entries soon.
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