How to Scientific Method

Writing a scientific paper:
In the experiments for this report, you collected a fair amount of data, summarized it in tables and presented the results in graphs. You also had to interpret the data to determine whether it supported or rejected your hypotheses. This is a good time to practice working on the results and discussions sections of a scientific paper. This will also help you to organize your work for your group presentation in front of your class next week.

In the results section of a scientific paper, all that is presented is the data you collected. The data is usually not in a raw form and most data in scientific papers has been collected multiple times so that statistical analyses can be made to show that the results are genuine, valid and consistent. Depending on the nature of the data, sometimes the best example from a number of repeat examples will be shown, as long as the example and the other repeats show the identical trends or results.

A good idea would be to review the results section from one or two of the papers available in lab. You don’t need to read them in detail as they will probably not make a lot of sense, especially out of context if you haven’t read the rest of the paper. You should note, that tables, graphs and other data are presented neatly in figures with titles and legends that allow the piece of data to ‘stand-alone’ and be understood without reference to the text. The text describes the figure and reports the trends in the data. Most of the time, the results section also states the conclusions, including whether the data supports the hypothesis (if there was one) or if alternative explanations are required. There is no interpretation of the data, and usually no explanation.

The interpretation of the data and the significance of the findings are left for a discussion section, however, the format and style of some journals allows these two sections to be merged. This being said, you can still usually see where the... [continues]

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