An aspiring science writer's pledge

A friend and I were discussing blogging yesterday, and he commented that I should write more often on my blog. I agreed with him, whole-heartedly, but explained to him the difficulty I face. My problem is this; the more zealous I am about an interesting subject that I would like to write about, the more afraid I am that I haven’t learned enough about the many facets of that subject to be able to write about it without bias.

I have a tendency to preach about the value of recognizing your own bias. Or at least, I would like to preach about it, because I think it is important. As such, I am petrified of my own bias… I am certain that it will sneak into my fingertips when I’m not looking and type itself into existence on my blog, only to be caught by a reader stopping by for a dose of my blathering. Of course, there is no escaping bias, no matter how hard we try. Everyone ultimately has an agenda (usually to live, preferably in a world that best suits one’s interests and needs), and a person’s actions and words will come to represent the goals therein. I haven’t yet figured a way out of that one.

What I can do, however, is devote myself to incessant inquiry when I decide to write about a subject, especially one that stirs many people to passion. I hereby declare that I will do everything in my power (or in that chunk of my free time that I have chosen to spend researching and blogging) to look at every possible side of an issue (or, umm, all the ones I can think of) before defending one side over another. I will set aside my own prejudices, and seek out the prejudices of the parties I am investigating. I will form my opinions based on verifiable empirical evidence whenever possible, well-educated guesses when they are probable, and not-so-educated guesses only when they are particularly comical. So rest assured, dear reader, that when I am writing here, from now on, I will certainly have done my homework (unless, of course, the dog ate the parts that I didn't like).