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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.

Please note that this blog does not accept comments. If you're reading this blog and want to respond then please use the contact form on the site, or comment on his Facebook page. You can also follow him on Twitter @mattwridley.

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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

    Archive for tag: science

  • Why did scientists suppress the lab-leak theory?

    Published on: Wednesday, 12 January, 2022

    In private, they said it was plausible. In public, they called it a conspiracy theory.

    My article for Spiked:

    In August 2007 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth virus on a farm in Surrey. It was a few miles from the world’s leading reference laboratory for identifying outbreaks of foot and mouth. Nobody thought this was a coincidence and sure enough a leaking pipe at the laboratory was soon found to be the source: a drainage contractor had worked at the lab and then at the farm.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: spiked, science, biology, coronavirus, origin-of-covid
  • I was duped by the Covid lab leak deniers

    Published on: Wednesday, 12 January, 2022

    That senior scientists saw evidence for theories that they trashed in public has shattered trust in science

    My article for the Telegraph:

    Inch by painful inch, the truth is being dragged out about how this pandemic started. It is just about understandable, if not forgivable, that Chinese scientists have obfuscated vital information about early cases and their work with similar viruses in Wuhan’s laboratories: they were subject to fierce edicts from a ruthless, totalitarian regime.

    It is more shocking to discover in emails released this week that some western scientists were also saying different things in public from what they thought in private. The emails were exchanged over the first weekend of February 2020 between senior virologists on both sides of the Atlantic following a meeting arranged by Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, with America’s two top biologists, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: telegraph, science, biology, coronavirus, origin-of-covid
  • Interview: How Science Lost the Public’s Trust

    Published on: Friday, 23 July, 2021

    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 does it mean to believe in science? The British science writer Matt Ridley draws a pointed distinction between “science as a philosophy” and “science as an institution.” The former grows out of the Enlightenment, which Mr. Ridley defines as “the primacy of rational and objective reasoning.” The latter, like all human institutions, is erratic, prone to falling well short of its stated principles. Mr. Ridley says the Covid pandemic has “thrown into sharp relief the disconnect between science as a philosophy and science as an institution.”

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: wall-street-journal, coronavirus, interview, science, biology, origin-of-covid
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