Why has Biden pardoned Anthony Fauci?

Matt Ridley

Appeared in the Spectator; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-biden-pardoned-anthony-fauci/   Joe Biden left it until the last minute to issue a pre-emptive pardon of Anthony Fauci for any offence committed since 2014 in his work on “the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House Covid-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President”. Yet surely […]

How I fell foul of YouTube’s fact-checkers

Matt Ridley

Appeared in the Spectator; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-i-fell-foul-of-youtubes-fact-checkers/ The day after Mark Zuckerberg said fact checkers “have destroyed more trust than they have created” I experienced why he has a point. I had done an interview with an evolutionary psychology podcaster, Paula Wright, about the origin of Covid. In it I said something that caused the entire interview […]

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Is another pandemic really inevitable?

Matt Ridley

Future pandemics as bad as Covid are ‘a certainty’, says Sir Chris Whitty. He is right in one sense. So many people gained so much money, power or fame out of the pandemic that they will be all too willing to declare another one soon. The WHO is trying to vastly increase its budget and its […]

Whoever you vote for, the Blob wins

Matt Ridley

At the age of 66 I feel like a first-time voter. As a member of the House of Lords, I was not allowed to vote in the last three general elections. But I retired from the House in 2021, so democracy here I come. I shall scan the ballot paper with interest: who is standing […]

The Cenotaph was designed as a symbol of multi-faith (and atheist) unity

Matt Ridley

Every year I lay a wreath a week early, because Blyth, my nearest town, was a submarine port. Submariners were banned from the first Armistice Day parade in Whitehall by a bossy admiral on the grounds that they were pirates who targeted civilians. In response they adopted skull-and-crossbones badges and arranged their own celebrations on […]

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Science fiction: the crisis in research

Matt Ridley

The president of Stanford University, the neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has announced his resignation following an investigation into allegations of fraud and fabrication in three of his lab’s scientific papers, including one cited as the most important result on Alzheimer’s disease in 20 years. The report exonerated him of committing the fraud but found he had […]

Why I’m sceptical about a superconductor breakthrough

Matt Ridley

Ateam of South Korean scientists has pre-printed a paper asserting that they have achieved superconductivity at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The paper has led to widespread speculation that this is the most significant physics discovery in decades, with huge implications for energy, medical technology and computing. Even Jordan Peterson is asking if room-temperature superconductivity […]

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