Newspapers, politicians and pressure groups have been moving smoothly for decades from one forecast apocalypse to another (nuclear power, acid rain, the ozone layer, mad cow disease, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops, the millennium bug…) without waiting to be proved right or wrong. So wrote Matt Ridley at the start of "Lying with science: a guide to myth debunking," in The Spectator back in March. Well, not quite the start. He actually began with a famous quote from H.L. … [Read more...]