Post #1 - The Optional Wordy Intro

Hello, Wilkommen, Bienvenue!

This is a science blog, dedicated to matters within the realm of science which I find myself interested about or which I think the general public should be more interested in. It is my hope that it will perform several functions.

1. To hone my journalistic abilities while I practice my writing, on a subject I love, and hope to learn more about as I go;
2. To make some issues of science of interest to the public, accesible to them while providing the maximum amount of information;
3. To avoid bias and to examine source and error

The title Hypertrophy (defined as "the extreme growth of pre-existing structures", by EO Wilson in his On Human Nature) is in reference at once to myself, as well as to the idea of knowledge in general, and its (mostly benign) self-catalytic process. It is my naiive hope, along with Wilson and others, that increase in public knowledge about scientific matters will enable us to make better, clearer, and more foresightful decisions than we currently are in this technical adolescence.

The science journalist is above all a translator. I'm not a journalist, though I hope one day to be. I carry a Bachelors of Science in Biology, and I've been an avid fiction writer my whole life, hence the idea of marrying the two forms for my ideal career. Since this is a learning curve, I expect I'll start out a bit rough in the journalistic sense, but the idea of a learning curve is that it goes up. Theoretically.

I will start by admitting my (hopefully only) bias (since there is always a bias). It is this: That what the scientific method gives us, after consideration of methods and interpretation, is given to be true in at least some form. It sounds self evident but it isn't. For example, as suggested by Richard Dawkins, take Newton's Second Law. Since the advent of relativity, it has been shown to not be the full explanation of bodies in motion; however, it's true in the sense that it accurately describes bodies in motion over the ranges of values to which it was applied. Therefore, even if what we know today only covers certain scenarios and to certain limits, it is taken as "true" for them, and any supplanting laws or discoveries will have to explain their results, or expain why they were so inherently wrong.

Also implied in the research based approach is that I won't speculate as to what's outside the realm of current research, or delve into fun debates about that which isn't testable, (which will be as hard for me as it will be boring for you :P) I will however, to the best of my ability, analyze the a) source and b) reliability of methods of any sources I do use. I have been frustrated by enough bad science that if any is used here, it is certainly by accident.

Alright, enough preemptive apologies, geekdom awaits!