Uncovering the essentials in biology
An essay competition for conjectures about biology that are not yet established — and for the experiments that would settle them.
- Prize
- 3 × £300 (£900 total)
- Length
- 1,000 words maximum
- Figures
- 1 maximum
- Deadline
- 5 December 2026, 23:59 GMT
- Results
- 5 January 2027
- Submit to
- submissions@heretics.bio
What we are asking for
Informed speculation in science can open up completely new vistas of understanding. But theories tend to be shared between scientific communities informally, with each making use of their imaginative potential to varying degrees. Biology, as a discipline, has tended to make the most limited use of that potential.
This competition seeks to change that. It seeks to provide a natural home for informed speculation in biology, and to unearth underlying abstractions that might direct new experimental endeavours. Ideally, the ideas submitted here would struggle to get published elsewhere, because they predate their experimental evidence. Yet they would also illuminate a path to the experiments that could settle them.
Some of the ideas that inspired this competition are collected here, if you want a sense of the range we have in mind.
Terms
- Essays must clearly identify what dominant understanding, field assumptions or principles they are breaking away from, and suggest a new hypothesis, abstraction or unifying principle that lacks direct experimental evidence but could replace the old paradigm.
- Essays must also suggest an experimental idea that would help establish or falsify the hypothesis, clearly articulating the observation that will need to be made — the presence of a certain marker, the ability to explain a larger set of observations, and so on — to test the heresy.
- 1,000 words, maximum. Equations for theoretical suggestions are accepted and do not count toward the word count.
- 1 figure at maximum, not included in the word count.
- Deadline 5 December 2026, 23:59 GMT. Results announced 5 January 2027.
- Submissions must indicate whether you want to be published anonymously or publicly. Please do not email us anonymously — we will only make bank transfers to individuals whose identities we can verify.
- Winners will be awarded by direct bank transfer. No payments will be made in crypto.
How to submit
Send your essay as a PDF or Word document to submissions@heretics.bio, with the subject line Essay submission — [your title]. Include a name, an email address, and one line on who you are.
You do not need a doctorate, an affiliation, or a publication record. Several of the most consequential speculations in the history of biology were made by physicists, mathematicians, and people working outside the institutions of the field — which is, in part, the point.
Publication and rights
You keep the copyright in your essay. Published essays appear here under CC BY 4.0, with your agreement, and you remain free to develop the idea, submit it to a journal, or publish it elsewhere — we consider publication here closer to a preprint than to a journal article.
Questions, or an idea you are not sure fits? Write to submissions@heretics.bio. We would rather answer a question than lose a good essay to uncertainty about the rules.