Writing Lab Reports and Scientific Papers
by Warren D. Dolphin
Iowa State University
Spoken communication is temporal and lightly forgotten, but written reports exist for long periods and yield long-term benefits for the author and others.
Scientific research is a group activity. Individual scientists perform experiments to test hypotheses about biological phenomena. After experiments are finished and duplicated, researchers attempt to persuade others to accept or reject their hypotheses by presenting the data and their interpretations. The lab report or the scientific paper is the vehicle of persuasion; when it is published, it is available to other scientists for review. If the results stand up to criticism, they become part of the accepted bod of scientific skill unless later disproved.
In some cases, a report may not be persuasive in nature but instead is an archival record for future generations. For example, data on the distribution and frequency of rabid skunks in a certain year may be of use to future epidemiologists in determining whether the incidence of rabies is enlargening. Regardless of whether a report is persuasive or archival, the following guidelines apply.
A scientific report usually consists of the following:
- Materials and methods
- Literature cited
There is general agreement among scientists that each section of the report should contain specific types of information.
The title should be less than ten words and should reflect the factual content of the paper. Scientific titles are not designed to catch the reader’s fancy. A good title is straightforward and uses keywords that researchers in a particular field will recognize.
The purpose of an abstract is to permit the reader to judge whether it would serve his or her purposes to read the entire report. A good abstract is a concise (100 to 200 words) summary of the purpose of the report, the data introduced, and the author’s major conclusions.
The introduction defines the subject of the report. It must outline the scientific purpose(s) or objective(s) for the research performed and give the reader sufficient background to understand the rest of the report. Care should be taken to limit the background to whatever is pertinent to the experiment. A good introduction will reaction several questions, including the following:
Why was this explore performed?
Answers to this question may be derived from observations of nature or from the literature.
What skill already exists about this subject?
The reaction to this question must review the literature, showcasing the historical development of an idea and including the confirmations, conflicts, and gaps in existing skill.
What is the specific purpose of the investigate?
The specific hypotheses and experimental design pertinent to investigating the topic should be described.
Materials and Methods
As the name implies, the materials and methods used in the experiments should be reported in this section. The difficulty in writing this section is to provide enough detail for the reader to understand the experiment without tremendous him or her. When procedures from a lab book or another report are followed exactly, simply cite the work, noting that details can be found in that particular source. However, it is still necessary to describe special chunks of equipment and the general theory of the assays used. This can usually be done in a brief paragraph, possibly along with a drawing of the experimental apparatus. Generally, this section attempts to reaction the following questions:
What materials were used?
How were they used?
Where and when was the work done? (This question is most significant in field studies.)
The results section should summarize the data from the experiments without discussing their implications. The data should be organized into tables, figures, graphs, photographs, and so on. But data included in a table should not be duplicated in a figure or graph.
All figures and tables should have descriptive titles and should include a legend explaining any symbols, abbreviations, or special methods used. Figures and tables should be numbered separately and should be referred to in the text by number, for example:
Figures and tables should be self-explanatory; that is, the reader should be able to understand them without referring to the text. All columns and rows in tables and axes in figures should be labeled. See appendix B for graphing instructions.
This section of your report should concentrate on general trends and differences and not on trivial details. Many authors organize and write the results section before the rest of the report.
This section should not just be a restatement of the results but should emphasize interpretation of the data, relating them to existing theory and skill. Speculation is suitable, if it is so identified. Suggestions for the improvement of mechanisms or experimental design may also be included here. In writing this section, you should explain the logic that permits you to accept or reject your original hypotheses. You should also be able to suggest future experiments that might clarify areas of doubt in your results.
This section lists all articles or books cited in your report. It is not the same as a bibliography, which simply lists references regardless of whether they were cited in the paper. The listing should be alphabetized by the last names of the authors. Different journals require different formats for citing literature. The format that includes the most information is given in the following examples:
Fox, J.W. 1988. Nest-building behavior of the catbird, Dumetella carolinensis. Journal of Ecology 47: 113-17.
Bird, W.Z. 1990. Ecological aspects of fox reproduction. Berlin: Guttenberg Press.
For chapters in books:
Smith, C.J. 1989. Basal cell carcinomas. In Histological aspects of cancer. ed. C.D. Wilfred, pp. 278-91. Boston: Medical Press.
When citing references in the text, do not use footnotes; instead, refer to articles by the author’s name and the date the paper was published. For example:
When citing papers that have two authors, both names must be listed. When three or more authors are involved, the Latin et al. (et alia) meaning “and others” may be used. A paper by Smith, Lynch, Merrill, and Rafter published in 1989 would be cited in the text as:
Smith et al. (1989) have shown that.
This brief form is for text use only. In the Literature Cited, all names would be listed, usually last name preceding initials.
There are a number of style manuals that provide detailed directions for writing scientific papers. Some are listed in further readings at the end of this section.
General Comments on Style
After writing a report, read it over, watching especially for lack of precision and for ambiguity. Each sentence should present a clear message. The following examples illustrate lack of precision:
The only way to prevent such errors is to read and think about what you write. Learn to reread and edit your work.
CBE Style Manual Committee. 1983. CBE style manual: A guide for authors, editors, and publishers in the biological sciences. 5th ed. Bethesda, Md. Council of Biology Editors.
McMillan, V.E. 1988. Writing papers in the biological sciences. Fresh York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc.