Results (“What?”)

In the results section you describe what you did and what the results were. All results are described here; you cannot present more results in the discussion. Normally results are stated without valuations and without references to sources (except for literature reviews).

In some cases, results and discussion are merged. Then the results can be processed at the same time as they are presented.

Laboratory work

For laboratory work, a description of your experiments should be included. Organise this in a logical way, so that it becomes a story with a beginning and an end. This means that you (briefly) need to explain what you did, and sometimes why, before describing the results. Often you also need to include a brief conclusion before proceeding to the next attempt.

As a rule, do not report the attempts in the order in which you actually made them. Often you will reach an important control attempt somewhere in the middle of the investigation, and it is most logical to report it at the beginning or the end. Sometimes it is useful to have a figure that shows the experimental methodology.

All work

Normally you have figures (charts) and tables to present (see the section "Tables and figures" on how to construct them). All tables and figures that affect the results must be in the results section, and you must refer to them in the text. Explain what you see in the figures and tables. It is not enough to write for example "The results are shown in Table 1". You must select the most important and clearest results and describe them in words.

Examples of how to refer to tables and figures:

  • "Substance Y had the strongest enzyme-inhibited ability with an IC 50 = 9.1 nM (Table 1)."
  • "We found a negative relationship between patient age and total clearance (Figure 1)."

If you have performed a statistical test, indicate which test is applicable, the number of observations or degrees of freedom and the p-value (eg R2 = 0.89; n = 24; p <0.01).

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