Scientific Writing

Scientific Writing

With regard to presenting your investigations, one of the objectives of this laboratory course is to develop your writing skills. In science, writing is the most important means of communicating research findings. In most cases, scientists report the results of their research activities in scientific journals in a rather standard scientific paper format. In this laboratory program, you will practice writing in this scientific format and style.

As you carry out this I.R.P., you will make observations, ask questions, and propose hypotheses. You will conduct experiments using procedures that are designed for you in this Web site. You will record results, design tables and graphs to present your data in a logical and organized format. You will interpret your results and come to conclusions based on your hypotheses. This process will be reflected in your independent construction of a scientific paper which is the culmination of this I.R.P. project.

A scientific paper usually includes the following parts: a Title (statement of the question or problem), an Abstract (short summary of the paper), an Introduction (background and significance of the problem), a Materials and Methods section (report of exactly what you did), a Results section (presentation of data), a Discussion section (interpretation and discussion of results), and References (books and periodicals used). A Conclusion (concise restatement of conclusions) may also be included.

Since performing this I.R.P. will be a collaborative effort (students will be working in teams of two), you and your teammate will share information for the Materials and Methods and the Results sections of your reports. However, the Introduction, Discussion, and References Cited (or References) sections must be the product of your own personal library research and creative thinking. If you are not certain about the level of independence and what constitutes plagiarism in this laboratory program, ask me, your instructor, to clarify the class policy. Plagiarism will not be taken lightly.

A more detailed description of each section of a scientific paper follows. As you write your paper, clearly label each section (except the title page), placing the title of the section against the left margin on a separate line.

Title Page and Title

The title page is the first page of the paper and includes the title of the paper, your name, the course title, your lab time or section, your instructor's name, i.e., Dr. Jacqueline S. McLaughlin, and the due date for the paper is November 22, 1996. The title should be as short as possible and as long as necessary to communicate to the reader the question being answered in the paper. For example, if you are asking a question about the inheritance patterns of the gene for aldehyde oxidase production in Drosophila melanogaster, a possible title might be "Inheritance of the Gene for Aldehyde Oxidase in Drosophila melanogaster." Something like "Inheritance in Fruit Flies" is too general, and "A Study of the Inheritance of the Enzyme Aldehyde Oxidase in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster" is too wordy. The words "A Study of the" are superfluous, and "Enzyme" and "Fruit Fly" are redundant. The suffix -ase indicates that aldehyde oxidase is an enzyme, and most scientists know that Drosophila melanogaster is the scientific name of a common fruit fly species. However, it is appropriate to include in the title both common and scientific names of lesser known species.

Place the title about 7 cm from the top of the title page. Place "by" and your name in the center of the page, and place the Department of Biology, Penn State Allentown Campus, and due date, each on a separate centered line, at the bottom of the page. Leave about 5 cm below this information.

Abstract

The abstract, if requested by me, the instructor, is placed at the beginning of the second page of the paper, after the title page. The abstract summarizes the question being investigated in the paper, the methods used in the experiment, the results, and the conclusions drawn. The reader should be able to determine the major topics in the paper without reading the entire paper. Basically, an abstract is a one paragraph synopsis of your entire paper. Compose the abstract after the paper is completed.

Introduction

The introduction has two functions: 1) to provide the context for your investigation and 2) to state the question asked and the hypothesis tested in the study. Begin the introduction by reviewing background information that will enable the reader to understand the objective of the study and the significance of the problem, relating the problem to the larger issues in the field. Include only information that directly prepares the reader to understand the question investigated. Most ideas in the introduction will come from outside sources, such as scientific journals or books dealing with the topic you are investigating. All sources of information must be referenced and included in the References Cited (or References) section of the paper, but the introduction must be in your own words. Refer to the references when appropriate. Unless otherwise instructed, place the author of the reference cited and the year of publication in parentheses at the end of the sentence or paragraph relating the idea for example, "(Finnerty, 1992)."

As you describe your investigation, include only the question and hypothesis that you finally investigated. Briefly describe the experiment performed and the outcome predicted for the experiment. Although these items are usually presented after the background information near the end of the introduction, you should have each clearly in mind before you begin writing the introduction. It is a good idea to write down each item (question, hypothesis, prediction) before you begin to write your introduction.

Write the introduction in past tense when referring to your experiment; but when relating the background information, use present tense when referring to another investigator's published work.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section describes your experiment in such a way that it may be repeated exactly. The majority of the information is this section comes from the Procedures section of the experiment, but in the paper, this information should not be a list of steps. Write the Materials and Methods section in paragraph format in past tense. Be sure to include levels of treatment, numbers of replications, and control treatments. If you are working with living organisms, include the species of organism and the sex of the organism if that information is relevant to the experiment. Do not include failed attempts unless the technique used may be tried by other investigators. Do not try to justify your procedures in this section.

If you describe an experiment from the lab manual, do not simply refer to the procedures listed in the lab manual. Write these procedures concisely, but in paragraph form. The difficulty comes as you decide the level of detail to include in your paragraphs. You must determine which details are essential for the investigator to repeat the experiment. For example, if in your experiment you incubate potato pieces in different concentrations of sucrose solution, it would not be necessary to explain that the pieces were incubated in plastic cups labeled with a wax marking pencil. In this case, the molarity of the sucrose solutions, the size of the potato pieces and how they were obtained, and the amount of incubation solution are the important items to include.

Results

The Results section consists of at least three components: 1) one or more paragraphs that describe the results, 2) figures (graphs, diagrams, pictures), and 3) tables.

Remember to number figures and tables consecutively throughout the paper. Refer to figures and tables within the paragraph as you describe your results, using the word Figure or Table, followed by its number, for example, "(Figure 1)." If possible, place each figure or table at the end of the paragraph in which it is cited.

Include your Chi-square statistical analysis in the Results section.

Report your data as accurately as possible as it happens. Do not report what you expected to happen in the experiment. Do not discuss the meaning of your results in this section.

Discussion

The Discussion section is where you will analyze and interpret the results of your experiment. You should state your conclusions in this section. Do not use the word prove in your conclusions. Your results will support, verify, or confirm your hypothesis, or they will negate, refute, or contradict your hypothesis; but the word prove is not appropriate in scientific writing.

Complete your Introduction and Results sections before you begin writing the discussion. The figures and tables in the Results section will be particularly important as you begin to think about your discussion. The tables allow you to present your results clearly to the reader, and graphs allow you to visualize the effects that the independent variable has had on the dependent variables in your experiment. Studying these data will be one of the first steps in interpreting your results. As you study the information in the Introduction section and your data in the Results section, write down relationships and integrate these relationships into a rough draft of your discussion.

The following steps, modified from Gray, Dickey, and Kosinski (1988), may be helpful to you as you begin to organize your discussion:

Restate your question, hypothesis, and prediction.
Answer the question.
Write down the specific data, including results of statistical tests.
State whether your results did or did not confirm your prediction and support or negate your hypothesis.
Write down what you know about the biology involved in your experiment. How do your results fit in with what you know? What is the significance of your results?
List weaknesses you have identified in your experimental design. You will need to tell the reader how these imperfections may have affected your results.
List any problems that arose during the experiment itself. Unforeseen difficulties with the procedure may affect the data and should be described in the discussion.

Having completed this list, integrate all of this information into several simple, clear, concise paragraphs.

References Cited (or References)

A Reference Cited section lists only those references cited in the paper. A References section (bibliography), on the other hand, is a more inclusive list of all references used in producing the paper, including those books and papers used to obtain background knowledge that may not be cited in the paper. Your choice will depend on how you use your references. You will probably cite all the references you read as you prepare to write your paper and therefore should have a References Cited section. Use the format at the end of this appendix as an example. In the text of the paper, cite the references using the author's name and year. For example:

The innate agonistic behavior of the male Siamese fighting fish has been widely studied (Simpson, 1968).

Simpson (1968) has described the agonistic behavior of the male Siamese fighting fish.

Reminders

As you begin writing your paper, refer to the following list for hints on how to make your writing stronger:

Write clearly in short, logical, but not choppy sentences.
Use past tense in the Abstract, Materials and Methods, and Results sections. Also use past tense in the Introduction and Discussion sections when referring to your experiment.
Write in grammatically correct English.
When referring to the scientific name of an organism, the genus and species should be in italics or underlined. The first letter of the genus is capitalized, but the species is written in all lowercase letters; for example, Drosophila melanogaster.
Use metric units.

References

The following sources are recommended to give additional help and examples in scientific writing:

Gray, L.S., J. Dickey, and R. Kosinski. Writing Guide. Clemson, SC: Clemson University, 1988.

(This unpublished writing guide was used in the preparation of this appendix.)

McMillan, V.E. Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

Moore, R. Writing to Learn Biology. New York: Saunders College Publishing, 1992.

Pechenik, J.A. A Short Guide to Writing about Biology, 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Dunski, J.F., N.A. Durso, J.M. Hay and R.J. Cyr (1995) Writing in the Biology Curriculum, 1995.

Here are two examples of journal references as would appear at the end of a published article:

Forsman, E. D., E. C. Meslow, and H. M. Wight. 1984. Distribution and biology of the spotted owl in Oregon. Wildlife Monographs, 87: 1-64.

Lande, R. 1988. Dempgraphic models of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). Oecologia, 75: 601-607.

Here is an example of a book reference as would appear at the end of a published article:

Lande, R., and G. F. Barrowlough. 1987. Effective population size, genetic variation, and their use in population management. In, Viable Populations for Conservation (M. E. Soule, ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

* There is no single, universally accepted way to list a reference; formats vary within the biological literature. Convince yourself by finding articles in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, etc. You’ll find that the referencing format varies slightly for each of these top journals. I recommend the above format for your I.R.P.

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