Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

My Times column on Britain and India:

By 2022, India will have overtaken China to become the most populous country in the world and, growing fast, will be rapidly returning towards the dominant position it held in the world economy for centuries. It was the world’s economic superpower when imperial Rome and Han China were its junior trading partners. It still represented one quarter of the world economy when Britain began to conquer it in 1757.

An expanded and updated version of my Times column on free trade agreements and Brexit:

The prime minister will soon press the button and launch Article 50 on its inexorable, ballistic trajectory towards impact in March 2019. From the political class here, let alone in Brussels, comes incessant pessimism about those two years: it will be fractious, we are not ready to negotiate, a trade agreement is all but impossible, the timetable is too tight, we’re going over a cliff.

My Times column on the frequent statistical reasoning mistakes that lead to bad policies: 

Budget week might be a good time to remind ourselves of the fallacies on which bad policies feed. Last year the University of Michigan’s Professor Richard Nisbett wrote a short book called Mindware, about the ways in which people deceive themselves and others about statistical reasoning. Since reading it, I have been noticing examples of the art everywhere.

Think of Nisbett’s book as a field guide to a nature reserve. Keep an eye out for the Sunk Cost fallacy, wherein you argue that a nuclear power station or a supersonic airliner must be built because you have spent a fortune on it already. It should never matter how much cost has already been sunk into a project: it is only worth spending more if it is cost-effective.

My recent Times column on gene editing's possibilities:

Scientists at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, said last week that they had edited the genomes of pigs, rendering them immune to a dangerous virus. The announcement is extraordinary precisely because it sounds almost routine these days. Gene editing is already starting to save the lives of human cancer patients and generate healthier crops. Yet the battle to ensure it gains favour with public opinion must be urgently addressed. The usual suspects are already trying to blacken its name.