WELCOME TO MATT RIDLEY'S BLOG

Here (a bit late) is my latest Wall Street Journal column, on epigenetic inheritance In the debate over whether our fates as individuals are ruled by nature or nurture-that is, by innate qualities or personal experience-one of the most baffling features is the way the nurture advocates manage to cast themselves as the great foes of […]

Greens who like to make unsubstantiated claims then demand the prosecution of others for the same offence I have just sent this letter to the Guardian: In response to Donald Brown’s call for climate scepticism to be classified as a crime against humanity (1st November), in which he said `We may not have a word for this […]

Stephen Budiansky diagnoses a logical flaw Over at LIberal Curmudgeon, Steve Budiansky has a good insight into a subject he knows well, ever since writing the book Nature’s Keepers: claims about species extinction. The whole science behind the extinction crisis is riddled with circular reasoning, but this is an especially fine example. No new research was involved, […]

An acrostic challenge Here is Sunday’s New York Times variety puzzle whose solution was a nice surprise for me (hat tip Steve Budiansky).

Another environmental cost of wind turbines Tim Worstall has an enlightening essay on his specialist subject, rare earths. Rare-earth minerals are the 15 elements in that funny box at the bottom of the periodic table — known as lanthanides — plus two others. About 95 percent of global production takes place in China, largely at one […]

Yet another study debunks the ocean acidification scare Further evidence that ocean acidification is a non-event, scientifically, even while being a big event for scientists financially: Thus, both of the investigated coastal plankton communities were unaffected by twenty-first century expected changes in pH and free CO2. This may be explained by the large seasonal, and […]

How to regulate the psychology of regulators My latest column in the Wall Street Journal is about the psychology of bureaucracy. just as we need to understand the human proclivities that give rise to booms and busts in markets, so we need to understand the human proclivities that motivate officials. Here are five identified by Slavisa […]

Plus other matters aired on the radio Here’s an hour long conversation I did on Econtalk with economist and novelist Russ Roberts about trade, prosperity and Adam Smith. It includes a discussion of why animals can manage reciprocity but not, apparently, exchange.

Political plurality allows innovations to flourish My latest Wall Street Journal column, Triumph of the Idea Smugglers, argues that from time to time in history good ideas need rescuing from bad regimes. If Thales of Miletus had not infected Greece with rationalism after travelling in Egypt, and if 1700 years later, Leonardo Fibonacci had not […]

What characteristics would extraterrestrial life have? Here’s a video of a discussion I had with Richard Dawkins about `life’ back in June: extra-terrestrial life, artificial life and synthetic life.