Prize doppelgangers

My first time judging a poster competition will also be my last. It was on the final day of a conference for fledgling chemists and I’d been drafted in as an emergency replacement when the proper judge couldn’t make it. There were no real guidelines on how to pick a winner, except a sort of judging bingo sheet to stamp categories such as ‘content’, ‘appearance’ and ‘discussion’ between 0 and 10 (though what was a 10 and what was a 0 was left decidedly opaque). All I could do was take to the hall and begin to work my way around some 60 PhD students and postdocs, each cheerfully stood next to their research.