Interview: How Science Lost the Public’s Trust
Matt Ridley
From climate to Covid, politics and hubris have disconnected scientific institutions from the philosophy and method that ought to guide them. My interview with Tunku Varadarajan in the Wall Street Journal: “Science” has become a political catchword. “I believe in science,” Joe Biden tweeted six days before he was elected president. “Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks.” But what […]
The World Needs a Real Investigation Into the Origin of Covid-19
Matt Ridley
A team of WHO researchers has arrived in China but won’t investigate the possibility that the coronavirus originated in a lab. My article for the Wall Street Journal, with Dr. Chan: In the first week of January, scientists representing the World Health Organization (WHO) were due to arrive in China to trace the origins of […]
What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Science
Matt Ridley
The scientific method remains the best way to solve many problems, but bias, overconfidence and politics can sometimes lead scientists astray My article for the Wall Street Journal: The Covid-19 pandemic has stretched the bond between the public and the scientific profession as never before. Scientists have been revealed to be neither omniscient demigods whose […]
Matt Ridley
From Ebola to Covid-19, many of the deadliest viruses to emerge in recent years have the same animal source. My article for The Wall Street Journal: RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather of a sample of its feces collected in 2013 […]
Why vaping causes harm in the US but not in the UK
Matt Ridley
It pays to legalise but regulate, rather than prohibit My recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the very different experiences of two countries with respect to electronic cigarettes. Why the U.K. Isn’t Having Problems With Vaping The lessons of Prohibition’s failure in the U.S. haven’t been lost on the British. A woman […]
Matt Ridley
The psychology behind global pessimism My article in the Wall Street Journal on the persistent appeal of pessimism: Has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty almost doubled, almost halved or stayed the same over the past 20 years? When the Swedish statistician and public health expert Hans Rosling began asking […]
The scandal behind the ban on neonicotinoids
Matt Ridley
There is no bee decline, let alone evidence it’s caused by pesticides An expanded version of my Wall Street Journal article on bees, pesticides and how environmental activists gamed the system: To those who have engaged with environmental activists in recent years, the concept of fake news is old hat. From Greenpeace’s hundred-fold exaggeration […]
Matt Ridley
Introduced species are the biggest cause of extinction – but not all bad My essay on invasive species in the Wall Street Journal: In July, the New Zealand government announced its intention to eradicate all rats, stoats and possums from the entire country by 2050 to save native birds such as the kiwi. It’s an […]
South Georgia – an oceanic wilderness replenished
Matt Ridley
Desecrated a century ago a subantarctic island is now restored My recent essay in the Wall Street Journal on South Georgia: When you tell people that you’re going to South Georgia, some will ask if you’re changing planes in Atlanta. In fact, the name belongs to an island near Antarctica. It’s about the size of […]
Matt Ridley
Why climate policies are doing more harm than climate change I have written five articles on climate change science and policy in the past week, for Scientific American, The Times (twice), the Wall Street Journal and the Spectator. They follow here in the form of a lengthy essay. Sentences in square brackets have been added […]
