A Guide to Scientific Writing Neal Lerner Marilee Ogren Balkama Massachusetts Institute of Technology Introductions What s an Introduction An introduction is a method to familiarize and orient your readers The content of an introduction depends on its purpose and the audience All models share a direct approach Don t hide your main point or save it until the end of the paper What s the Purpose of an Introduction in Scientific Writing Provide the context of your work create your research space define gap in knowledge set up the direction you ll take in your discussion section State your focus hypothesis question Provide justification for your work how your work can answer the question What are Some Common Pitfalls of an Introduction Section Including unnecessary background or being repetitive Exaggerating or understating the importance of your work Using lackluster openers and weak follow through in the body of your introduction Not grounding the work in a context that will be important to your reader Not focusing on a clear and compelling research question or hypothesis Guidelines for Introductions from Two Scientific Organizations From the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported From the American Society for Microbiology The introduction should supply sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand and evaluate the results of the present study without referring to previous publications on the topic The introduction should also provide the hypothesis that was addressed or the rationale for the present study Use only those references required to provide the most salient background rather than an exhaustive review of the topic Methods What are Some Goals of a Methods Section Present the experimental design Provide enough detail to allow readers to interpret your results Cite as Angela Belcher Drew Endy Natalie Kuldell and Agi Stachowiak Course materials for 20 109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering Fall 2007 MIT OpenCourseWare http ocw mit edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded on DD Month YYYY Lerner Ogren A Guide to Scientific Writing p 2 Give enough detail for readers to replicate your work The key to a successful Methods section is to include the right amount of detail too much and it begins to sound like a laboratory manual too little and no one can repeat what was done Successful Scientific Writing 2nd ed What are Some Pitfalls of a Methods Section Providing too little or too much information Reiterating published methods rather than citing them Writing strictly in chronological order alternatives most important first most fundamental first etc Methods and results don t correspond you have to provide methods for all the experiments you report Forgetting to use visual organizers that direct readers to specific aspects of the methods section e g subheads Using a dangling modifier because of an over reliance on passive voice After scraping the desired plate in four swipes the bacteria were placed in 8ml of media with no antibodies Failing to provide a context for the methods themselves In order to we context for the particular method is provided Writing a Protocol rather than a Methods section A Protocol is A series of steps to be carried out Written in sequential or temporal order Intended for the reader to achieve a final result A Methods Section is A series of steps already completed and is written in past tense Written in logical order Intended for the reader to replicate the experiment Results What is the Purpose of the Results Section Objectivity Make the data just the data easy to find Some readers want to interpret your data themselves rather than accepting the interpretation presented in the discussion Description Describe the data presented in figures and tables What Differentiates Results from the Methods Methods How the data were accumulated Results What data were accumulated What Differentiates Results from the Discussion Results Data presentation Experiments showed that Discussion Data interpretation Experiments suggest that Cite as Angela Belcher Drew Endy Natalie Kuldell and Agi Stachowiak Course materials for 20 109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering Fall 2007 MIT OpenCourseWare http ocw mit edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded on DD Month YYYY Lerner Ogren A Guide to Scientific Writing p 3 What are the Contents of a Results Section A brief description of the experiment or rationale at the beginning of each subsection In order to As a result we found that The data in past tense Descriptive text for FEW determinations Tables or graphs for REPETITIVE determinations The data that your methods indicated you would produce and answering the questions you established in your introduction What are Some Qualities of a Well Written Results Section Methods and Results Correspond i e no experimental results for which there are no methods and vice versa Results are presented in a logical order e g most important first most fundamental first etc Results focus on the question s or hypothesis introduced earlier in the paper What are Some Pitfalls of a Results Section Overstating the results e g Figure 1 clearly shows Reporting irrelevant results Although it is sometimes useful to report experiments that didn t work Omitting visual organizers such as subheads Including inappropriate illustrations Including methods and or discussion Overlap is acceptable in some circumstances Illustrations What s the Purpose of Illustrations Condense large amounts of information Convince readers of your findings by showing data quality Focus attention on certain findings e g relationship between values Simplify complex findings Promote thinking and discussion Illustration Caveat The most beautiful illustration cannot hide lousy content content is key What are Some Pitfalls of Figures and Titles Captions Figures Not mentioned in text Textual data inconsistent with figures Mislabeling Symbols data points unreadable or cluttered Ugliness failure to get help from graphic designer Captions Reiterate results section Written in shorthand abbreviated form rather than whole sentences Cite as Angela Belcher Drew Endy Natalie Kuldell and Agi Stachowiak Course materials for 20 109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological