Ronald Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason, where he writes a weekly science and technology column.
Bailey is the author of the book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century (July 2015) and Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004.
In 2006, Bailey was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who have made the “most significant contributions” to biotechnology in the last 10 years.
From 1987 to 1990, Bailey was a staff writer for Forbes magazine, covering economic, scientific and business topics. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Commentary, The Public Interest, Smithsonian, TechCentralStation, National Review, Reader’s Digest and many other publications.
Prior to joining Reason in 1997, Bailey produced several weekly national public television series including Think Tank and TechnoPolitics, as well as several documentaries for PBS television and ABC News. In 1993, he was the Warren T. Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Bailey won a 2004 Southern California Journalism Award for best magazine feature for his story, “The Battle For Your Brain,” which delved into the ethical and political conflicts over new brain enhancement technologies. In 2005, Bailey won a first place Southern California Journalism Award for best online commentary for his series on creationism, “Creation Summer Camp.” In 2017, Bailey won a first place Southern California Journalism Award for best magazine column for his “Poverty Is Deadly: Why is the death rate for young white Americans rising?”
Bailey is the editor of several books, including Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death (Prima Publishing, 2002), Earth Report 2000: Revisiting The True State of The Planet (McGraw Hill, 1999), and The True State of the Planet (The Free Press, 1995). He is the author of ECOSCAM: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse (St. Martins Press, 1993).
Bailey has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the NBC Nightly News, PBS’ Newshour, several National Public Radio programs, and various C-SPAN programs. He has lectured at Harvard University, Yale University, Morehouse University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Rutgers University, the House of Lords, the University of Virginia, and many other places.
In 2004, Bailey testified before a congressional committee on “The Impact of Science on Public Policy.”
He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
Bailey lives in Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife Pamela.
